Investigation of an Optical Method for the Bilirubin Detection of Neonates in Vivo

Jaundice occurring in neonates has become a challenging issue in the field of health care. The liver of some of the neonates is not developed enough to remove the breakdown product of hemoglobin called bilirubin, causing the disease jaundice. If the bilirubin level becomes very concentrated, then the babies can experience a condition called kernicterus, other neurological disorders, and even death in some cases. The conventional diagnosis methods are invasive, painful, and prone to infections. This enables the development of a non-invasive system for estimating bilirubin in neonates. Optical approach, by its non-invasive nature, has paved the way for identifying the tissue parameters in vivo for the better diagnosis and treatment of various applications in health care. In this paper, an analysis is carried out to investigate whether the optical system that uses diffuse reflectance spectroscopy can be employed to assess and estimate the bilirubin concentration in neonates non-invasively. The chromophores found in biological tissue have distinct spectral properties across the electromagnetic spectrum since they are wavelength dependent. The reflected spectrum is used to calculate the concentration of the desired chromophore, and minor fluctuations are apparent in the spectrum.