Department of Biomedical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2012 Sep;59(9):2459-65. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2012.2203306. Epub 2012 Jun 6.
Implantable luminescent sensors are being developed for on-demand monitoring of blood glucose levels. For these sensors to be deployed in vivo, a matched external hardware system is needed. In this paper, we designed a compact, low-cost optical system with highly efficient photon delivery and collection using advanced optical modeling software. Compared to interrogation with a fiber bundle, the new system was predicted to improve interrogation efficiency by a factor of 200 for native sensors; an improvement of 37 times was predicted for sensors implanted at a depth of 1 mm in a skin-simulating phantom. A physical prototype was tested using silicone-based skin phantoms developed specifically to mimic the scattering and absorbing properties of human skin. The experimental evaluations revealed that the prototype device performed in agreement with expectations from simulation results, resulting in an overall improvement of over 2000 times. This efficient system enables use of a low-cost commercial spectrometer for recording sensor emission, which was not possible using only fiber optic delivery and collection, and will be used as a tool for in vivo studies with animal models or human subjects.
正在开发可按需监测血糖水平的可植入发光传感器。为了使这些传感器能够在体内使用，需要匹配外部硬件系统。在本文中，我们使用先进的光学建模软件设计了一种紧凑、低成本的光学系统，该系统具有高效的光子传输和收集。与使用光纤束进行询问相比，新系统预计可将原生传感器的询问效率提高 200 倍；对于植入在皮肤模拟体 1 毫米深的传感器，预计可提高 37 倍。使用专门开发的基于硅树脂的皮肤仿体对物理原型进行了测试，该仿体旨在模拟人体皮肤的散射和吸收特性。实验评估表明，原型设备的性能与模拟结果相符，总体提高了 2000 多倍。该高效系统可使用低成本的商业光谱仪来记录传感器的发射光，而仅使用光纤传输和收集则无法实现这一点，它将被用作动物模型或人体研究的工具。
