It looks like a ghoulish Halloween trick. Yet the device, which projects a creepy green video image of a patient's veins onto their skin, is about to go on trial in a US hospital. The idea is that it will help staff to pinpoint a suitable vein for an injection or a drip.
The prototype of the system, which he calls a vein contrast enhancer (VCE), uses a near-infrared camera to capture a real-time video image of the patient's veins, a PC to enhance the contrast of the image and a desktop video projector to display it on the skin in real time.
Zeman has now miniaturised the VCE system to fit it in a package the size of a shoebox, making it portable enough to be mounted on an intravenous drip stand. Three prototypes will begin clinical trials at a hospital in Tennessee later in 2004.
Hints to young consumers: X-Ray Specs do not really work.
Vein camera keeps injections on target
Tags: perversions, toys
Current Music: Violent Femmes -- Color Me Once ♬
13 Responses:
Heroin addicts rejoice!
Mainline on the Greenline.
You know, I'd rather have doctors and nurses that have the technical skill to find a vein when, say, the power goes out.
This looks like a goofy one-task device akin to the goofy one-task kitchen devices showing up in Target lately: s'mores makers. "Low-carb" quesodilla makers. I shit you not.
I agree, but as a person with small, deep veins, I'd be all for a system that helped, as I don't really enjoy getting stuck four or five times, often with accompanying squirming of the needle inside my arm as they search for the vein, every time I give blood.
Everyone's veins are different. They have to find them anyway.
OK, so when are we going to see this used in a porno?
Hasn't throbbing-vein-infra-red porno already been done?
The Operation, 1995.
I noticed this same effect using my Sony Night Vision camcorder with a low-pass IR filter.
What do you bet that the system has $1000 worth of parts and is sold to hospitals at $20000 apiece? :-(
This sort of thing would be awesome just inside the door.
It may surprise you, but we do try to keep the amount of intravenous activity to a minimum here...
Spoil sport!