Non-invasive method of determining skin thickness and characterizing layers of skin tissue in vivo
OwnerSuresh Thennadil, Thomas B. Blank +1inventors
InventorsSuresh Thennadil, Thomas B. Blank, Tamara L. Troy
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of measuring in vivo skin tissue thickness employs noninvasive NIR absorbance spectra. Constituents of a tissue sample are characterized and quantified based on differing absorbance spectra and scattering properties, allowing thickness and chemical composition of layers to be estimated. Pathlength normalization reduces spectral interference in predicting analyte concentrations.
Claims26
A non-invasive method of estimating thickness of skin tissue in vivo and characterizing constituents of tissue layers, comprising the steps of:
- providing a calibration set of exemplary measurements;
- providing a library of normalized NIR absorbance spectra of key indicators;
- measuring an NIR absorbance spectrum of a target layer at a tissue sample site;
- normalizing said spectrum of said tissue site relative to said spectra of said key indicators;
- calculating the magnitude of at least one of said constituents;
- and
- applying a calibration model to said calculated magnitude to characterize said tissue layers.
A non-invasive method of estimating thickness of in vivo skin tissue comprising the steps of:
- providing a calibration set of exemplary measurements;
- measuring a NIR absorbance spectrum of a target layer at a tissue sample site;
- applying a calibration model to said absorbance spectrum;
- and
- determining a thickness estimate of said target layer of said tissue sample.
The method of 20, further comprising the step of;
- summing said thickness estimates of individual target layers;
- whereby a total thickness of said tissue sample is calculated.
In a method for noninvasive prediction of blood analytes:
- a method of reducing interference in a measured NIR spectrum of a sampled tissue site due to non-linear variation in optical properties of individual layers of said tissue site comprising the steps of:
- determining concentrations of key indicators specific to said tissue layers;
- determining thickness of said tissue layers;
- processing said concentration determinations and said thickness determination through a non-linear function whereby said measured NIR spectrum is normalized.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.