Accurately measuring flow rates is a key requirement in many medical applications such as infusion and drug delivery systems. A major drawback of current systems is the low resolution of the sensors in the low flow rate regime. In this article, we present a method based on Holographic PIV/PTV that has been used for the first time to measure flow rates in the range of a few nL/min. Our method requires a very simple setup that combines lensless holography with particle velocimetry. For flow rates in the 70 to 200 nL/min range, the highest uncertainty was 5.6% (coverage factor k=2). This is an open-source project; the CAD designs and software source code are available at https://github.com/gui-miotto/holovel.
Keywords: PIV; PTV; holography; low flow rate; measurement uncertainty; velocimetry.
© 2022 the author(s), published by De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston.