Near-infrared LED based non-invasive blood glucose sensor

Diabetes is a metabolic pathological condition of concern, which affects vital organs of body if not diagnosed and treated on time. Regular monitoring of blood glucose is important to avoid complication of diabetes. Commonly used glucose measurement methods are invasive which generally involves finger puncturing. These methods are painful and frequent pricking cause calluses on the skin and have risk of spreading infectious diseases. Therefore there is need to develop a non-invasive monitoring system which can measure blood glucose continuously without much problem. The present work is focused on development of non-invasive blood glucose measurement sensor system using Near-infrared (NIR) technique. Initially in-vitro glucose measurement prototype is developed using continuous wave (CW) from NIR LED (940 nm) to check the sensitivity of the system for different glucose concentrations. Later a Sensor patch was designed using LED and a photodiode to observe diffused reflectance spectra of blood from the human forearm. Diffused reflectance spectra of the subjects obtained with this technique was also compared with commercially available invasive finger tip gluco-meter. The results are promising and show the potential of using NIR for glucose measurement.