Near-field sensor for non-invasive determination of blood glucose concentration

Currently numerous studies are aimed at developing non-invasive technologies for analyzing blood glucose concentration. This opportunity will allow for the prevention and early diagnosis of the population to identify violations of carbohydrate metabolism, which will lead to a decrease in the amount of diabetes mellitus, as well as save huge costs associated with consumables. However, despite the intensive development of non-invasive blood glucose meters, this technology still does not exist. The complexity of the task is due to the huge number of factors affecting the reading of a non-invasive glucometer, which must be optimized to obtain an effective device. First of all, this is due to the presence of a protective skin and muscle cover of a human. As a rule, the skin and parameters of the internal environment introduce significant errors in the measured data. The authors of the project see an original solution to this problem in the study of the so-called near-field effect. The near field of the emitter penetrates deep enough since it does not experience significant absorption in the conductive medium. This will maximize the signal-to-noise ratio.

The work demonstrates a model of a near-field sensor, which has a high penetration of electromagnetic waves into highly absorbing media at a small sensor size (the diameter is 25 mm, the thickness is 0.76 mm). Based on the experimentally obtained data of the dielectric constant for glucose concentrations of 1.2-10 mmol/l, the reflected signal is shown during mathematical modeling of the sensor in the frequency range 0.5-5 GHz. The influence of other biological tissues (dermis, epidermis, fat layer, muscles) and their influence on the near field of the sensor and the received data are also demonstrated.