Noninvasive monitoring local variations of fever and edema on human: Potential for point-of-care inflammation assessment

摘要

Tissue inflammation is often accompanied by fever and edema, which are common and troublesome problems that probably trigger disability, lymphangitis, cosmetic deformity and cellulitis. Here we developed a device, which can measure concentration and temperature variations of water in local human body by extended near infrared spectroscopy in 900~1000 nm wavelength range. An experiment of four steps incremental cycling exercise was designed to change tissue water concentration and temperature of subjects. Body temperature was also estimated by tympanic thermometer and surface thermometer as comparisons during the experiment. In the stage of recovery after exercise, the signal detected by custom device is similar to tympanic thermometer at the beginning, but it is closer to the temperature of surface later. In particular, this signal shows a better linearity, and a significant change when the exercise was suspended. This study demonstrated the potential of optical touch-sensing for inflammation severity monitoring by measuring water concentration and temperature variations in local lesions.