Medical Trauma Assessment Through the Use of Smart Textiles

Survival rates at military and civilian trauma sites decrease dramatically if medical treatment is delayed for more than the golden hour. Remote gathering of advance wound information is possible with medical smart textile, an innovation by Science, Math & Engineering, Inc. Medical smart textile is an electrically conductive fabric possessing a cross hatched network of conducting paths etched into the textile. Open wound information would register in the textile as holes resulting from penetrating projectiles breaching the fabric. Interrogation for open wound information could occur passively, as a wear-and-forget fabric, or actively, as a wear-and-activate fabric. The passive mode of the textile is remotely interrogated by a radar for wound holes whereas the active mode of the textile senses wound holes as changes in conductor network resistance. Detection of holes by radar in the passive mode was successfully demonstrated at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory indoor radar range.