A Measure to Study Skin Reflectance using Non-Invasive Photosensor with Economic Design

Abstract

Non-invasive mode of clinical testing has created a major impact on the society and finds huge demand in the clinical domain. There are several instances where such approach receives more co-operations from the patient. Replacing the traditional practice with such non-invasive procedure requires appropriate clinical investigation and validations, specifically exact location of veins for intravenous applications like venepuncture and other medical procedures. Collection of blood samples for bilirubin test for new-borns, blood sugar level detection also needs a special attention where such non-invasive procedure is highly preferred. Such clinical methodology highly relies on the selection/design of photo sensor and works on the principles of light that gets scattered from the human skin. This specific research study attempts to measure the effect of the photo sensor on the skin reflection and how the properties can be exploited for bilirubin test to detect jaundice for new-borns. Neonatal jaundice often referred as hyperbilirubinemia which indicates the concentration of serum bilirubin levels in blood stream. The higher and lower bilirubin levels can cause irreversible brain damage which is referred as kernicterus. The yellowish spot due to bilirubin deposition in the neonatal skin tissue indicates the presence or absence of jaundice. Several attempts have been made in the recent past to develop non-invasive mode of measuring the blood concentration level for recognition of bilirubin levels. The proposed research study involves in measuring the skin reflectance using photo sensor and to measure the bilirubin concentration in a non-invasive mode. A GaAsP yellow LED with a wavelength of 590nm with TEPT5700 light sensors was applied and Arduino real time processor was interfaced to the circuitry. The system was designed in such a manner that the buzzer activation indicates the severity of the bilirubin concentration. The lab based circuitry was converted in to indigenous prototype and was tested with newborn in a real time mode. The clinical validation was found to be quite promising. It can be concluded that the designed system was found to be more economic and can introduce in the primary healthcare sector.