Background and Identification
A vein viewer is a device used to view a patient’s veins, allowing health care providers easier access. Vein viewers use near-infrared light that is absorbed by hemoglobin in the blood and reflected by the tissue surrounding it. This information can be made into an HD image of the patient’s vein systems. The image of the veins can either be shown on a screen or projected directly onto the patient’s skin. The vein viewer is beneficial in that it can solve problems like rolling veins and allow doctors to pick bigger veins for access, and avoid bifurcations and valves.
Additional Information
- Vein Viewer – Visualizing Veins in Real Time (Interesting Engineering article)
- Near-infrared vein finder (Wikipedia)