Laser absorption spectroscopy measurements of different pulmonary oxygen gas concentrations in transmittance and...

The gas in scattering media absorption spectroscopy (GASMAS) technique has the potential for continuous, clinical monitoring of preterm infant lung function, removing the need for X-ray diagnosis and reliance on indirect and relatively slow measurement of blood oxygenation.

We aim to determine the optimal source-detector configuration for reliable pathlength calculation and to estimate the oxygen gas concentration inside the lung cavities filled with humidified gas with four different oxygen gas concentrations ranging between 21% and 100%.

Anthropomorphic optical phantoms of neonatal thorax with two different geometries were used to acquire GASMAS signals, for 30 source-detector configurations in transmittance and remittance geometry of phantoms in two sizes.

The results show that an internal light administration is more likely to provide a high GASMAS signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In general, better SNRs were obtained with the smaller set of phantoms. The values of pathlength and $$ concentrations calculated with signals from the phantoms with optical properties at 820 nm exhibit higher variations than signals from the phantoms with optical properties at 764 nm.

Our study shows that, by moving the source and detector over the thorax, most of the lung volumes can potentially be assessed using the GASMAS technique.