Design and implementation of automated phototherapy system

Nowadays more and more people are suffering from autoimmune skin diseases. Clinical studies have shown that the 311 Nm narrow-band UVB light's immune-modulating effect decreases symptoms, which can be a good alternative compared to steroid treatments. The purpose of my work is the design and implementation of an automated phototherapy system. The system is a 2 DOF (Degree of freedom) stand, which has the possibility to cover the entire area of the treatment bed. Movement along 2 axes is accomplished with the help of two stepper motors and two motor drivers. The control unit of the system is a Zybo Zynq -7000 SoC development board, running a Linux-based operating system. This system hosts the image processing algorithm, which is responsible for detecting the areas on the patient's skin requiring special treatment. Having identified the target area's location a path planning algorithm calculates the needed step counts, which are afterwards transmitted to the reprogrammable modules in the Zybo FPGA development board. These modules are finite state machines that generate the impulses needed to drive the stepper motor drivers.