US 6,587,702 B1 · Classification and characterization of tissue through features related to adipose tissue

Abstract

A non-invasive system for characterizing and classifying the state and structure of a tissue sample operates on a near infrared absorbance spectrum of in vivo tissue. A method that uses near-infrared spectral measurements to characterize and classify the state and structure of tissue sampled based on absorbance features related to fat in adipose tissue is provided. Also provided is a method of estimating skin fold thickness. The approach provides information about sources of tissue variability and is therefore useful for establishing the general category of the tissue structure. Categorization of subjects on the basis of the determination is suitable for further spectral analysis and the measurement of biological and chemical compounds, such as blood analytes. The invention further provides a method of estimating percent body fat based on a skin fold thickness estimate. The invention also provides an apparatus for measuring the absorbance spectra coupled with a digital processor for performing the required analyses.

Claims65

Dependent claims

A non-invasive method of characterizing and classifying the state and structure of tissue on the basis of spectral absorbance features related to fat in the subcutaneous tissue comprising the steps of:

providing a calibration set of exemplary measurements;
measuring NIR absorbance spectrum of a skin tissue sample;
detecting outliers, wherein said outliers are invalid measurements caused by spectral variation due to any of instrument malfunction poor sampling and subjects outside of said calibration set;
preprocessing said NIR spectrum, wherein said preprocessing step includes one or more transformations that attenuate noise and instrumental variation without affecting signal of interest, including any of wavelength selection, scaling, normalization, smoothing, derivatives, and filtering;
providing a basis set, wherein said basis set comprises a pure component spectrum of water and one of animal fat, for feature extraction and preprocessing;
and
extracting features, whereby features of measurements relevant to classification are determined.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Classification and characterization of tissue through features related to adipose tissue

Life of this patent

Classification and characterization of tissue through features related to adipose tissue

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims65