Virtual instrumentation in biomedical equipment

Abstract

At present the world increase of overweight and obesity in parallel with undernutrition has a great impact in many fields such as nutrition, health, sports, chronic diseases and others. Because of this the assessment of body fat became more and more required. An easy, non-invasive and portable method based in the measurement of skinfolds uses skinfold callipers and makes possible the estimation of the percentage of body fat. The callipers recognised in the literature and available in the market lack technological evolution. A novel integrated system has been developed. It consists in a mechanical solution capable of bidirectional wireless communication with a software application running in a personal computer, integrating a database. The main purpose for this work is to briefly describe the development of a virtual instrument for more effective assessment of body fat, automatic data processing, recording results and storage in a database, with novel features. Presenting the better mechanical characteristics in the market, offers a friendly user interface and a good transmission rate for the wireless communication between device and software with high potential to conduct new studies in the development of new models based in the time response of adipose tissues, http://lipotool.com.