Biomedical optical imaging based blood glucose measurement

Diabetes is one of the most prevalent and rapidly increasing diseases nowadays. Blood glucose levels should be measured frequently in order to treat and/or control this chronic disease. At present, blood glucose measurement is done invasively by pricking the finger to obtain a blood sample. This method is both painful and has a risk of infection. Noninvasive and continuous blood glucose level monitoring is essential. Many studies have been done with the intent of improving this process. However, there is no method yet that has been approved by an authorized organization. In this dissertation, some research based on optical premises was conducted taking these problems into consideration. Firstly, different phantoms were produced and optical characterization studies were done for the in-vitro measurements. Then, blood glucose behavior was analyzed through the use of transmission, reflection, and polarization techniques in very high scattering mediums. The difficulties encountered and the acquired results were presented. In addition, an index parameter was proposed for blood glucose concentration by using dual wavelength pairs which measure 1338 – 1322 nm and 2144 – 2166 nm. In final step, an optical measurement system was built for measuring blood glucose levels based on pulse phyletismography in-vivo. The dynamic absorption spectrum was calculated using data that was acquired through the system. It was presented that the relation between actual blood glucose level and predicted glucose level by using multivriate regression analysis. It was observed thorough the acquired results that the proposed optical system has acceptable prediction range