Investigation into the non-invasive monitoring of blood glucose levels in people with diabetes

Abstract

Diabetes Mellitus is a condition that reduces the body's ability to maintain normal blood glucose levels. Maintaining the correct blood glucose level is important as it provides different parts of the body with energy to function properly. Because of this, diabetics must be able to know what the levels are, so they can control them with supplements or other treatments. At present, people with diabetes must monitor their blood glucose levels using invasive techniques like needles and pin-prick devices sometimes up to three or four times a day, depending on the severity of their condition. Because of the pain and inconvenience of testing using this method, sufferers don't always test themselves as often as they should. A non-invasive, in vivo system of monitoring blood glucose levels is the vision of this investigation. Being non-invasive would make the task of measuring blood sugar painless. In vivo, in a clinical testing sense means constantly monitoring. This is in contrast to the in vitro method commonly used today where blood is extracted with the needle or pin-prick and analysed. As much a problem as pain for the diabetic is the inconvenience of having to stop what they are doing and test themselves. A solution could be a device which constantly monitors without being prompted by the user. An in vivo system has advantages as it could be used in the future to provide a closed-loop insulin delivery system (i.e an artificial pancreas), and it can provide alarms for hypoglycaemic (low glucose) and hyperglycaemic (too much glucose) attacks. There have been some studies into using near-infrared light to measure the glucose levels, but as yet this method is not accurate enough for clinical applications. This project will investigate the method and determine if there are any ways to improve the quality of signals or similar alternatives.