**5. LED Therapy automation using an embedded system integrated with a control software**

The main goal here was to provide a control interface of the therapy between the healthcare professional and the patient, giving them the possibility to monitor the phototherapy ses‐ sions progress and to treat the patient in a simple and effective way.

There are already lots of resources available in the market that use LEDs for skin disease treatment, like skin cancer or even aesthetic purposes, among others. When a new treatment is discovered,the creation of a new essay is necessary and therefore a new productis created. This project proposes a solution for this problem integrating hardware with control software. With the control software acting over the embedded system, it's possible to program new assays for each treatment; acting directly overthe LED's, and dynamically minimizing the costs over new products every time a new treatment is discovered

### **5.1. System overview**

The system is divided into two parts: the embedded system and the control. The embedded system contains a microcontroller, a LED board and an Ethernet Module for communication with the application [12]. The control consists of a database server and an application, as shown in Figure 12.

**Figure 12.** Automation of phototherapy with high brightness LEDs using an embedded system integrated with a soft‐ ware control.

Through the control application, it is possible to register a patient or start a treatment session. The treatments are mapped to the database as essays that determine the variable values for each pathology. The variables are: the colors and the time of firing the LED arrays [25]. The communication between Embedded System and Application control is possible through the Ethernet Protocol [16].

#### **5.2. System model**

The voltage produced on the LED was 3.8V and current of the LEDs around 580mA. The values

**5. LED Therapy automation using an embedded system integrated with a**

The main goal here was to provide a control interface of the therapy between the healthcare professional and the patient, giving them the possibility to monitor the phototherapy ses‐

There are already lots of resources available in the market that use LEDs for skin disease treatment, like skin cancer or even aesthetic purposes, among others. When a new treatment is discovered,the creation of a new essay is necessary and therefore a new productis created. This project proposes a solution for this problem integrating hardware with control software. With the control software acting over the embedded system, it's possible to program new assays for each treatment; acting directly overthe LED's, and dynamically minimizing the costs over new

The system is divided into two parts: the embedded system and the control. The embedded system contains a microcontroller, a LED board and an Ethernet Module for communication with the application [12]. The control consists of a database server and an application, as shown

**Figure 12.** Automation of phototherapy with high brightness LEDs using an embedded system integrated with a soft‐

obtained were close to the simulation and design [11].

products every time a new treatment is discovered

sions progress and to treat the patient in a simple and effective way.

**control software**

242 Advances in Bioengineering

**5.1. System overview**

in Figure 12.

ware control.

In this section the prototype details will be shown, such as: the application operation, embed‐ ded system operation and the database server details [16].

#### *5.2.1. Application*

The control application was written in JAVA language. The application aims to perform the user interface with the proposed system. Through the application the user can perform the following tasks:


The application stores the results of each treatment session.

#### *5.2.2. Embedded system*

The embedded system purpose is to communicate with the application and to execute the treatment over the patient. The embedded system is based on the Atmega328p AVR micro‐ controller present in the Arduino UNO board. It also has a LED board and an Ethernet Module ENC28J60 and resistors. The Figure 13 shows the prototype schematics. The database server aims to store all the patient data and the treatments as well. It's in the database that the LED treatment sequence is also stored. The chosen Data Base Management System (DBMS) was the PostgreSQL version 9, because it doesn't have license costs and it's capable of storing all the needed data [13, 14, 16].

Tree arrays were assembled on a phenolite board with tree blue, yellow and red LED colors. Each array has thirty LEDs of the specified color which are powered by the corresponding Arduino pin and a common ground.

Where, (A) Ethernet ENC28J60 module, (B) Resistors, (C) Arduino UNO and (D) LEDs array.

The LEDs board is composed by three arrays of high brightness LEDs with the following characteristics:

**•** Red array: The red light emitting LED array contains 30 high brightness LEDs of 5mm, with wavelength between 725nm and 730nm. Operates at 3, 3V and 20mA.


**Figure 13.** Prototype schematics.

Figure 14 shows the prototype used in the laboratory.

**Figure 14.** Numerous tests were performed with the prototype before manufacturing the device.
