OCT-BASED GLUCOSE SENSOR

在美国，大约有1400万人患有糖尿病。目前的血糖传感技术包括一天几次手指穿刺术，以获取一滴血供进一步分析。许多公司和科学团体已经做出了巨大的努力来非侵入性地量化葡萄糖浓度。光学相干层析成像(OCT)是一项新兴的技术，正被应用于组织的高分辨率无创成像。它利用对从组织相干散射的光子的灵敏检测。我们提出了一种新型的葡萄糖OCT传感器，该传感器基于精确测量皮肤的光散射，该散射随葡萄糖浓度的增加而减小。我们在动物正常极化条件下(注射葡萄糖和葡萄糖钳夹实验)的初步研究结果表明：(1)OCT系统测量的组织散射值随血糖浓度的增加而急剧而线性地减小；(2)150-500微米深度的组织散射值的变化不是由注射葡萄糖引起的生理反应引起的。该项目的具体目标是：(1)在正常和正交极化下研究基于OCT的血糖传感；以及(2)在动物和临床研究中评估基于OCT的技术。该项目的成功实施可能导致便携式非侵入性灵敏血糖传感器的开发，该传感器将显著改善糖尿病患者的生活质量。

Approximately 14 million in the USA suffer from diabetes mellitus. The present glucose sensing technique involves a finger puncture several times a day to obtain a droplet of blood for further analysis. There have been enormous efforts by many companies and scientific groups to quantify glucose concentration noninvasively. Optical coherence tomography (OCT), booming technology, is being applied for noninvasive imaging in tissues with high resolution. It utilizes sensitive detection of photons coherently scattered from tissue. We propose a novel glucose OCT sensor based on precise measurement of light scattering from skin that decreases with the increase of glucose concentration. The results of our preliminary studies performed in normal polarization in animals (bolus injections and glucose clamping experiments) demonstrated: (1) sharp and linear decrease of tissue scattering measured with the OCT system with the increase of blood glucose concentration and (2) the changes in tissue scattering at the depth of 150 to 500 mum are not induced by physiologic response due to bolus glucose injections. Specific aims of the project are: (1) to study OCT-based glucose sensing in normal and orthogonal polarization; and (2) to evaluate the OCT-based technique in animal and clinical studies. Successful implementation of the project may result in the development of a portable noninvasive sensitive glucose sensor that will considerably improve the quality of life for diabetic patients.