%0 Journal Article
%T Development of Automatic 3D Blood Vessel Search and Automatic Blood Sampling System by Using Hybrid Stereo-Autofocus Method
%A Eiji Nakamachi
%A Yusuke Morita
%A Yoshifumi Mizuno
%J International Journal of Optics
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/258626
%X We developed an accurate three-dimensional blood vessel search (3D BVS) system and an automatic blood sampling system. They were implemented into a point-of-care system designed for medical care, installed in a portable self-monitoring blood glucose (SMBG) device. The system solves problems of human error caused by complicated manual operations of conventional SMBG devices. We evaluated its accuracy of blood-vessel position detection. The 3D BVS system uses near-infrared (NIR) light imaging and the stereo and autofocus hybrid method to determine blood vessel locations accurately in three dimensions. We evaluated the accuracy of our 3D BVS system using a phantom of human skin, blood vessels, and blood. Additionally, we established an automatic blood sampling system for SMBG and assessed its performance in relation to punctures, blood suction, transport, and discharge on an enzyme sensor. The 3D BVS and automatic blood sampling system are adequate for use in a portable SMBG device. 1. Introduction Recently, the rapidly increasing number of diabetic patients has [1] become a major social problem throughout the world. Diabetic patients must independently measure blood glucose concentrations using a self-monitoring blood glucose (SMBG) device and self-inject insulin several times each day [2, 3]. Diabetes patients and candidates might constitute up to one-fifth of the world population [1]. Therefore, SMBG devices are expected to play an increasingly important role in daily medical care. The commercial SMBG devices of various kinds that are on the market today can be categorized as either noninvasive or minimally invasive. Noninvasive devices adopt infrared spectroscopy [4], FT-IR-ATR method [5], photoacoustic spectroscopy [6], and so on. However, these methods present severe problems of low accuracy and unreliability. In contrast, minimally invasive devices [7, 8] can measure blood glucose concentrations with high accuracy [9], but puncture with a needle or knife edge is painful. In addition, such devices frequently induce human error because of their complicated manual operations during puncture, treatment of small blood samples, self-measurement, and so on. Therefore, many improvements are necessary for SMBG devices. Several groups have developed minimally invasive SMBG devices equipped with a blood vessel search system to reduce human error. For example, Yamakoshi et al. developed a device to detect the positions of blood vessels in the arm using reflected near-infrared (NIR) light [10], but the blood vessel depth could not be determined accurately.
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijo/2012/258626/