Spectroscopy Human Hemogram Analysis - A feasiblity case study

Blood hemograms are an essential part of the clinical pathology diagnosis. These are currently performed in the clinical laboratory using automated hematology machines (AHM) to discriminate blood cells by capillary laser scattering technology. Despite all the efforts in this miniaturization through microfluidics, this approach may not be appropriate for use at point-of-care (POC) under harsh or non-ideal operational conditions. AHM already uses low volumes of blood samples, but the blood is still collected by traditional venipuncture, and quantification of cells and hemoglobin still requires the use of reagents. A way to allow POC technology to be used in the harsh conditions of emergency medicine is to remove both venipuncture procedures and reagents.Research in canines and felines has demonstrated that hemogram analysis using reagent-less spectral technology at the point-of-care (POC) with an ultra-portable device that requires a single drop of blood is feasible for quantification with analytical-grade quality red blood cells (RBC), hemoglobin (Hgb), and hematocrit (HTC). Such POC uses solely ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared spectroscopy to unscramble spectral information related to blood composition using self-learning artificial intelligence, providing unequivocal advantages in terms of convenience, real-time results, pain-free procedure, and reduced risk of infection.Herein, we demonstrate the feasibility of direct detection of RBC, Hgb, and HTC counts in human blood using spectral POC technology for medical applications. The results showed excellent agreement in terms of correlation (R) and total error (TE) against the ground-truth method, where i. RBC: R2=0.84-0.77, TE=7.3 -5.7%; ii. Hgb: R=0.74-0.85 and TE=4.9-6.4%; and iii. HTC: R=0.74-0.80 and TE=5.5-7.6%.Spectral POC demonstrates promise as a method for conducting rapid and simple point-of-care hemogram analyses in human patients. Further research is necessary to enhance and confirm the instrument's accuracy and to expand the range of parameters examined.