Noninvasive determination of alcohol in tissue

Abstract

An apparatus and method for non-invasive determination of attributes of human tissue by quantitative infrared spectroscopy. The system includes subsystems optimized to contend with the complexities of the tissue spectrum, high signal-to-noise ratio and photometric accuracy requirements, tissue sampling errors, calibration maintenance problems, and calibration transfer problems. The subsystems include an illumination subsystem, a tissue sampling subsystem, a spectrometer subsystem, a data acquisition subsystem, and a processing subsystem. The invention is applicable, as examples, to determining the concentration or change of concentration of alcohol in human tissue.

Description

CROSS REFERENCES TO CO-PENDING APPLICATIONS [0001] This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C § 120 to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 832,585, entitled “System For Non-Invasive Measurement Of Glucose In Humans,” filed Apr. 11, 2001, incorporated herein by reference, and to U.S patent application Ser. No. 10 / 281,576, entitled “Optically Similar Reference Samples”, filed Oct. 28, 2002, incorporated herein by reference, and to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 378,237, entitled “System For Non-Invasive Measurement Of Glucose In Humans,” filed Mar. 3, 2003, incorporated herein by reference, and to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 753,506, “Noninvasive Determination of Direction and Rate of Change of an Analyte,” filed Jan. 8, 2004, incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention generally relates to the use of spectroscopy for measuring alcohol presence or concentration utilizing non-invasive techniques in combination with multivariate...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The system provides reproducible and accurate non-invasive alcohol measurements with high signal-to-noise ratio, effective calibration maintenance, and commercial viability, overcoming the limitations of existing methods by offering painless, contamination-free, and rapid testing.

Problems solved by technology

The design contends with the complexities of the tissue spectrum, high signal-to-noise ratio and photometric accuracy requirements, tissue sampling errors, calibration maintenance problems, calibration transfer problems plus a host of other issues.

In the 1.2 to 2.5 micron spectral region, the large number of optically active substances that make up the tissue complicate the measurement of any given substance due to the overlapped nature of their absorbance spectra.

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