| dc.description.abstract | Utilization of polarized light for improved specificity and sensitivity in disease diagnosis is occurring more often in fields of sensing, measurement, and medical diagnostics. This dissertation focuses on two distinct areas where polarized light is applied in biomedical sensing/monitoring: The first portion of worked reported in this dissertation focuses on addressing several major obstacles that exist prohibiting the use of polarized light as a means of developing an optical based non-invasive polarimetric glucose sensor to improve the quality of life and disease monitoring for millions of people currently afflicted by diabetes mellitus. In this work there are two key areas, which were focused on that require further technical advances for the technology to be realized as a viable solution.
First, in vivo studies performed on New Zealand White (NZW) rabbits using a dual-wavelength polarimeter were conducted to allow for performance validation and modeling for predictive glucose measurements accounting for the time delay associated with blood aqueous humor glucose concentrations in addition to overcoming motion induced birefringence utilizing multiple linear regression analysis. Further, feasibility of non-matched index of refraction eye coupling between the system and corneal surface was evaluated using modeling and verified with in vitro testing validation. The system was initially modeled followed by construction of the non-matched coupling configuration for testing in vitro.
The second half of the dissertation focuses on the use of polarized light microscopy designed, built, and tested as a low-cost high quality cellphone based polarimetric imaging system to aid medical health professionals in improved diagnosis of disease in the clinic and in low-resource settings. Malaria remains a major global health burden and new methods for, low-cost, high-sensitivity diagnosis of malaria are needed particularly in remote low-resource areas throughout the world. Here, a cost effective optical cell-phone based transmission polarized light microscope system is presented utilized for imaging the malaria pigment known as hemozoin. Validation testing of the optical resolution required to provide diagnosis similar to commercial polarized imaging systems will be conducted and the optimal design will be utilized in addition to image processing to improve the diagnostic capability. | en |
