Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy for the measurement of tissue oxygen saturation

Tissue oxygen saturation (StO2) is a useful parameter for medical applications. A spectroscopic method has been developed to detect pathologic tissues, due to a lack of normal blood circulation, by measuring StO2. In this study, human blood samples with different levels of oxygen saturation have been prepared and spectra were acquired using an optical fiber probe to investigate the correlation between the oxygen saturation levels and the spectra. A linear correlation between the oxygen saturation and ratio of the intensities (760 nm to 790 nm) of the spectra acquired from blood samples has been found. In a validation study, oxygen saturations of the blood samples were estimated from the spectroscopic measurements with an error of 2.9%. It has also been shown that the linear dependence between the ratio and the oxygen saturation of the blood samples was valid for the blood samples with different hematocrits. Spectra were acquired from the forearms of 30 healthy volunteers to estimate StO2 prior to, at the beginning of, after 2 min, and at the release of total vascular occlusion. The average StO2 of a forearm before and after the two minutes occlusion was significantly different. The results suggested that optical reflectance spectroscopy is a sensitive method to estimate the StO2 levels of human tissue. The technique developed to measure StO2 has potential to detect ischemia in real time.