Yakimov Boris, Buiankin Kirill, Denisenko Georgy, Shitova Yuliya, Shkoda Andrey, Shirshin Evgeny
Faculty of Physics, M.V.Lomonosov Moscow State University, 1-2 Leninskie Gory, Moscow, Russia, 119234.
Laboratory of Clinical Biophotonics, Biomedical Science and Technology Park, Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, Trubetskaya 8, Moscow, Russia, 119048.
Sci Rep. 2024 Oct 2;14(1):22874. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-73084-6.
Non-invasive assessment of haemoglobin (Hb) level in blood is a hot spot in the point-of-care biomedical diagnostics. Several optical methods are suggested as a solution, some of them being approved for clinical use. Still, there is no consensus on the accuracy of optical techniques, the quality of Hb assessment on different tissue sites, and on the ability of combined use of several optical techniques to improve the quality of Hb level prediction. In this work we examined the capabilities of two optical techniques-diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and RGB-imaging of the skin and fingernails areas-in detecting low blood Hb level. The test sample consisted of 240 adult volunteers with 70 volunteers exhibiting Hb level lower than 120 g/L. We show that using simple descriptors of the diffuse reflectance spectrum of the forearm skin and fingernails is applicable for predicting low blood Hb concentration (ROC-AUC = 0.84 ± 0.08), while RGB-imaging shows similar performance when applied to the fingernail areas (ROC-AUC = 0.83 ± 0.07), which can be considered perspective for clinical use and screening properties. We also report that while the joint use of predictions from two optical methods slightly improves the accuracy of non-invasive Hb level assessment (ROC-AUC = 0.86 ± 0.07), the effect is not as high as one might expect from combining predictions of truly independent modalities, indicating the limit of the accuracy one can expect with multimodal optical approach. We review this case and propose possible solutions towards more sensitive non-invasive optical determination of hemoglobin.
血液中血红蛋白（Hb）水平的无创评估是即时医疗生物医学诊断领域的一个热点。人们提出了几种光学方法作为解决方案，其中一些已获临床应用批准。然而，对于光学技术的准确性、不同组织部位Hb评估的质量以及几种光学技术联合使用提高Hb水平预测质量的能力，目前尚无共识。在这项工作中，我们研究了两种光学技术——漫反射光谱法以及皮肤和指甲区域的RGB成像——检测低血Hb水平的能力。测试样本包括240名成年志愿者，其中70名志愿者的Hb水平低于120 g/L。我们表明，使用前臂皮肤和指甲漫反射光谱的简单描述符可用于预测低血Hb浓度（ROC-AUC = 0.84±0.08），而RGB成像应用于指甲区域时表现出类似性能（ROC-AUC = 0.83±0.07），这可被视为具有临床应用和筛查特性的前景。我们还报告称，虽然两种光学方法预测的联合使用略微提高了无创Hb水平评估的准确性（ROC-AUC = 0.86±0.07），但效果不如真正独立模式预测组合所预期的那么高，这表明多模态光学方法所能达到的准确性存在局限性。我们审视了这种情况，并提出了更灵敏的无创光学测定血红蛋白的可能解决方案。
