3. Equipment used

3.1 Medical sensor families

A sensor is based on a transducer that converts one physical signal into another, such as a light signal into an electrical signal. Essential to data acquisition systems, the sensor uses certain physical properties of materials, such as dilatation, inertia, variations in inductance, capacitance, the Hall effect, photoelectricity, piezoelectricity, the Doppler effect, and so on.

Sensors can differentiate objects by contrast, shape or color. Other sensors are sensitive to humidity, temperature or vibration. Intelligent" sensors are...