Recognizing Cold Atmospheric Plasma Plume Using Computer Vision

Abstract

Over the last three decades, cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has been heavily investigated in a wide range of biological applications, including wound healing, microorganism sterilization, and cancer treatment. Atmospheric pressure plasma jets (APPJs) are the most common plasma sources in plasma medicine. An APPJ’s size determines its application range and approach in treatment. In this study, we demonstrated the real-time recognition of an APPJ’s plasma plume output using computer vision (CV), dramatically improving the measurement speed compared to the traditional method of using the naked eye. Our work provides a framework to monitor an aspect of an APPJ’s performance in real time, which is a necessary step to achieving an intelligent CAP source.