Advancement in polarimetric glucose sensing: simulation and measurement of birefringence properties of cornea

摘要

Clinical guidelines dictate that frequent blood glucose monitoring in diabetic patients is critical towards proper management of the disease. Although, several different types of glucose monitors are now commercially available, most of these devices are invasive, thereby adversely affecting patient compliance. To this end, optical polarimetric glucose sensing through the eye has been proposed as a potential noninvasive means to aid in the control of diabetes. Arguably, the most critical and limiting factor towards successful application of such a technique is the time varying corneal birefringence due to eye motion artifact. We present a spatially variant uniaxial eye model to serve as a tool towards better understanding of the cornea's birefringence properties. The simulations show that index-unmatched coupling of light is spatially limited to a smaller range when compared to the index-matched situation. Polarimetric measurements on rabbits' eyes indicate relative agreement between the modeled and experimental values of corneal birefringence. In addition, the observed rotation in the plane of polarized light for multiple wavelengths demonstrates the potential for using a dual-wavelength polarimetric approach to overcome the noise due to time-varying corneal birefringence. These results will ultimately aid us in the development of an appropriate eye coupling mechanism for in vivo polarimetric glucose measurements.