Sensitive sensors without the ghosts: Avnet HMIs for surgery are strong, safe and reliable

Capacitive sensors are great – highly reliable and have a wide range of functions. But in the medical world there are some very particular requirements around the service life of such sensitive sensor technologies.

For example, display and touch systems in medical applications must be much more robust:

- Being able to operate them while wearing latex gloves is essential
- They must not generate false touches during cleaning
- If a conductive liquid (such as blood) splashes on the display, it still must function perfectly
- High standards of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and Electromagnetic interference (EMI) must be met

In particular, EMC requirements require that no ghost touches are generated in an irradiation of 28V/m in some frequency ranges. Of course, our new touch controller means this is no longer an issue and the big challenge is to avoid ghost touches in high frequency surgery devices.

To address this, we have designed a highly robust touch solution that passes all necessary EMI/EMC tests and will eventually even block ghost touches from any nearby high frequency surgery devices or their cables.

To achieve this and ensuring that all issues are now avoided in medical applications, we adapted the pattern of the X/Y layers in the touch and added new special filters in the algorithm for the frequency of the touch IC (based on the SIS 95xx family).

This level of touch optimization is currently unique to Avnet and sits within our ability to improve time to market for our customers, even with such an important category of custom displays and HMIs.

Indeed, such HMIs are responsible for truly enhancing the patient/clinician experience by offering a 3D touch visualization which can be quickly shared with the patient (see left for example). Equally, such solutions are timesaving for doctors, allowing them to see more patients.

Do you have a medical application challenge that requires our expertise? We are on hand to guide you in the creation of display or touch solutions that meet your requirements. Get in touch today and discover how Avnet Embedded can propel your product innovation.

Displays

⠀
⠀

Learn More

HMI

Learn More

Is this a true revolution in visual interfaces?

19/04/2024

In a world where so many things are declared ‘revolutionary’, we try to exercise caution. But the combination of Ultra-Low Power TFT (Thin-Film Transistor) and Projected Capacitive Touch (PCT™) has opened up new possibilities for energy-efficient human-machine interfaces (HMIs). To us, it feels like the word definitely qualifies here, but we should probably take the opportunity to explain why, how these technologies work, their importance in the market and their advantages over ePaper displays.

Overwhelmed by choice? Take the SimplePlus route.

26/03/2024

Are you feeling lost? That you simply don’t have enough hours in the day to spend hunting for the perfect display model? And then there’s the challenge of finding the right partner to help you with your visualization or HMI. Sheesh. It shouldn’t be this hard, right?

ePaper integration with PCAP

22/03/2024

Electronic paper (also known as e-ink, electrophoretic display, or electronic ink) is a kind of electronic display that mimics the appearance of ink on paper. An electronic paper display reflects ambient light like paper, unlike conventional flat panel displays that emit light.

32” monitor set with individual LED controller board and software

32” of potential: the curved touchscreen that shows you more

23/11/2023

You see a curved touchscreen monitor. You might even be thinking how good it would look in your gaming rig. We see the painstaking mechanical stress needed to form the curve and how to calculate the limits of that stress. We see the film sensor and 3mm coverglass, optically bound to a TFT display. And the complexity of engineering both a backlight and laminating touch capability across the curve.

P is for ‘performance’: the new 15.6” displays from Tianma

30/10/2023

Are you looking for a display that’s high-performance, powerful and prepared for any predicament? We’re always excited to be adding a new range from Tianma to our portfolio, but this one is so good it’s preposterous.

PDLC: The ‘useful’ glass that is for more than just interiors

24/10/2023

As often happens at Avnet, an acronym is the start of a journey to something pretty cool. Take PDLC, for example. It stands for ‘Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystals’, which, we must admit, isn’t the catchiest of descriptions. But when you engineer PDLC into glass (or even a self-adhesive film that can be affixed to glass) it becomes much more interesting.

Glass guardians: display technology’s transparent armor

05/10/2023

We have it in front of our faces every day, but only pay it any attention if it breaks. A layer of transparent coverglass sits over all the display panels that we use every day – in smartphones and tablets, televisions and monitors – and is essential in guarding the delicate electronics underneath, while also enhancing the quality of the display.

AMOLED: The luxe display that’s not for everyone

27/09/2023

Ultra thin and ultra light, with outstanding optical performance, Active Matrix OLED displays have been a staple technology for smartphones and smaller consumer applications since around 2009. Happily, these small, powerful displays have recently grown in size, opening up opportunities for their use beyond handheld applications.

Seek out your ‘phygital’ with object recognition over PCAP

18/09/2023

When you want people to interact differently with your touchscreen, what do you do? For example, you might want to bring the benefits of a product to life using an interactive table, where different aspects of the user experience are displayed as you move it around the surface. Or perhaps you have a touch display that would be more user friendly with a ‘dial’ function? Not easy to achieve with just fingers. How do you bring the physical and digital together in an easy and fun way?

Talk to the experts!

Let us know about your product or your challenge and our team will get in touch to discuss how we can help.

Let’s Talk

Avnet Embedded presents COM-HPC modules based on 12th Gen Intel® Core™ processors for high-performance computing

Sensitive sensors without the ghosts: Avnet HMIs for surgery are strong, safe and reliable

Displays

HMI

Related articles

Share this entry

Talk to the experts!

Avnet Embedded presents COM-HPC modules based on 12th Gen Intel® Core™ processors for high-performance computing