Application of newborn jaundice determination and design of a noninvasive bilirubinometer

Newborn jaundice (hyperbilirubinemia), which is seen in65%of healthy new-borns, is usually a harmless condition and passes without any treatment. However,5%of the jaundiced babies develop kernictures which may cause irreversible brain damage.Therefore, detection and follow-up of jaundiced babies are very important.The most common method for the evaluation and follow-up of neonatal jaundiceis measuring the level of total serum bilirubin (TSB). Transcutaneous bilirubin (TcB)measurement, which is an alternative for jaundice detection and monitoring, is a safe,easy, painless, cost-effective and fast method as well as being noninvasive. The appli-cation of TcB measurement uses visible field reflection spectroscopy to determine thelevel of jaundice in newborns. The aim of this thesis is to design algorithms which candetermine the level of jaundice by nonlinear approaches using diffuse reflection spectraobtained from a specially developed device. In order to achieve this, TcB and TSBmeasurements were taken from 314 infants and prediction algorithms were developed.The TcB values predicted by the designed algorithms were compared with theTSB values of the paired measurement. In addition, the performance of the designedalgorithms was compared with the widely used JM-103 transcutaneous bilirubinometer.All designed algorithms can predict jaundice level with correlation values between 0.932and 0.943. The results of the comparisons were found to be promising for the use oftranscutaneous bilirubinometer devices.