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Diabetics could soon have a way to easily measure their blood sugar without drawing blood, thanks to a new laser system.
Researchers at Princeton University in the US have developed a technology that measures the amount of glucose in the blood by analysing how much light it absorbs when a laser is shone through a user’s hand.
They hope this could provide an alternative to the daily practice of pricking the fingertips to take a blood sample that is then analysed by a portable meter.
The key to developing the laser system was finding the right frequency of light that would pass through the body’s cells and be absorbed by dermal interstitial fluid – which has a strong correlation with blood sugar – without interacting with other chemicals present.
Mid-infrared light has this ability but can be difficult to produce using standard lasers and requires relatively high power and stability to penetrate the skin and scatter off the interstitial fluid.
But by using a quantum cascade laser, in which electrons pass through multiple semiconductor layers, the beam can be set to one of a number of different frequencies
Read more: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/more-s...d-sugar-testing/1019104.article#ixzz3B9rp0uDu
Researchers at Princeton University in the US have developed a technology that measures the amount of glucose in the blood by analysing how much light it absorbs when a laser is shone through a user’s hand.
They hope this could provide an alternative to the daily practice of pricking the fingertips to take a blood sample that is then analysed by a portable meter.
The key to developing the laser system was finding the right frequency of light that would pass through the body’s cells and be absorbed by dermal interstitial fluid – which has a strong correlation with blood sugar – without interacting with other chemicals present.
Mid-infrared light has this ability but can be difficult to produce using standard lasers and requires relatively high power and stability to penetrate the skin and scatter off the interstitial fluid.
But by using a quantum cascade laser, in which electrons pass through multiple semiconductor layers, the beam can be set to one of a number of different frequencies
Read more: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/more-s...d-sugar-testing/1019104.article#ixzz3B9rp0uDu