Development of Optical System for Noninvasive Measurement of Blood Turbidity

Abstract

The significance of quantitative evaluation of a blood lipid level has been recognized recently. The lipid level will increase the blood turbidity, and eventually damages our health. However, blood sampling is required in clinical examination which makes the daily care at home difficult. In this research, we derived original equation. We have developed a noninvasive optical technique to measure the reduced scattering coefficient μ_s^' that is closely related to the serum blood lipid level. To examine the applicability of this technique to human subjects, we construct an original device using LED's and PD's. The total size of the applicator part is about 15×40 mm with 5 mm thickness. In experiments, the validity of the proposed technique was examined. We could measure the corresponding change in μ_s^' with the different concentrations of instralipid solutions. This result suggested the applicability of the technique to the evaluation of the blood lipid level.