title: Modeling of light propagation in skin, and an application to noninvasive diagnostics
creator: Volz, Dietmar
subject: 510
subject: 510 Mathematics
description: Diabetics would greatly benefit from a device capable of providing continuous noninvasive monitoring of  their blood glucose levels. At present, diabetics rely on pricking their finger to obtain a blood sample which in turn is placed upon a test strip. Life long finger pricking is often accompanied by chronic  infections and pain during the lancets prick. Moreover, to significantly reduce longer-term secondary effects of diabetes such as retinopahy, nephropathy or neuropathy  on the one hand and to reduce the risk of unnoticed suffering from hypoglycemia on the other hand a more frequent or even continuous monitoring of blood glucose swings is needed. In the past decade several attempts have been made to measure the glucose content of blood in a more compliant fashion.  These endeavors will gain importance in the near future. Already nowadays, diabetes ranges among the top civilization deseases, about 10 of all U.S. citizens are living  with this diagnosis, European citizens will make up in the future. Many techniques have been suggested for continuous monitoring of glucose, ranging from implanted electrochemical sensors to noninvasive optical methods. So far none of these methods have proven to be sensitive or specific enough for commercial use.  The method proposed in this thesis deals with an effect which is based upon changes of the light scattering coefficient in the  upper dermal regions of skin induced by  glucose dissolved in the interstitial fluid. We will focus on    the identification of this coefficient in vivo. As we want to probe our tissue with decoherent light of a single wavelength  in the near infrared regime, the physical process   is properly described by the radiative transfer equation. The modeling has to face the task of mapping a special measurement setting as well as spatial and temporal  varying skin optical properties to a proper boundary value problem formulation for the radiative transfer equation and an effective
date: 2001
type: Dissertation
type: info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis
type: NonPeerReviewed
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/1877/6/diss.pdf
format: application/pdf
identifier: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserverhttps://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/1877/1/diss.pdf
identifier: DOI:10.11588/heidok.00001877
identifier: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-opus-18771
identifier:   Volz, Dietmar  (2001) Modeling of light propagation in skin, and an application to noninvasive diagnostics.  [Dissertation]     
relation: https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/1877/
rights: info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
rights: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/help/license_urhg.html
language: eng