Ultraviolet sensors for the on-line monitoring of sterile packaging materials

The importance of human life and the continuing endeavors to enhance human well being have sparked interest in the design of sensors and computer-aided online inspection systems that critically monitor and control the process of manufacturing sterile medical device packaging materials. In this paper, attention is focused on various aspects of the design of an ultraviolet fluorescence indication sensing system that would be used in the on-line detection, sizing, and automatic isolation of defects in the adhesive-coated sterile medical device packaging material Tyvek$+$/. A spectrofluorometric analysis to determine the operating parameters of the system, construction of a two-channel prototype, analog and digital signal-conditioning and -processing techniques, quantitative experiments to determine sensor resolution and sensitivity requirements, and the design of a multielement sensor array to span the Tyvek web are presented.