Research on the best measurement situation between optical probe and tissue surfaces in non-invasive detection

Near-infrared spectroscopy is often used for the non-invasive detection of composition in the human body, such as that of blood glucose and haemoglobin, due to its high penetration depth into tissues. Although it is feasible to position the optical probe precisely, contact situation between probe and human tissues is a difficult problem to determine because of physiological tremor and mechanical performance of bio-soft tissue. Here, we proposed a novel estimation method for the situation between the optical probe and tissue surfaces based on the dynamic auto-correlation matrix of two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2DCOS) and radar chart. The diffuse reflectance spectra from the left palm of 4 healthy volunteers were collected while the optical probe gradually approached and pressed bio-tissues with a custom-design controlling device. 2DCOS in the wavelength with lower absorption (1000-1400 nm) was calculated under the perturbation of relative-distance and contact pressure between the optical probe and tissue surface. The synchronous 2DCOS showed that the surface reflection and diffuse reflectance were greatly affected by the contact conditions in 1100 nm, 1220 nm, and 1300 nm. Then the dynamic auto-correlation matrix of 2DCOS was established for the adjacent spectra, and the significant difference wavelengths were used to build radar charts to determine the critical contact situation visually. Results showed that the maximum variations of dynamic auto-correlation matrix appeared at near 1300 nm, and the relative distance between the probe and tissue corresponding to the critical contact state can be easily observed with radar charts with 0.25 mm uncertainty, which was consistent with the self-feeling of each volunteer. So this method can be applied to exactly determine the optimal measurement status for the non-invasive body composition detection in vivo. It is important for the design of human-machine interface and the accuracy improvement of body composition measurements.