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Optical Sensors in Health and Wellbeing
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Optical Sensors in Health and Wellbeing

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Optical Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 31026

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Panicos Kyriacou

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Research Centre for Biomedical Engineering, School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering, City, University of London, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, UK
Interests: photoplethysmography; pulse oximetry; wearables; biosignal processing; optical sensors; cardiovascular monitoring
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. James May

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Research Centre for Biomedical Engineering, School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, City, University of London, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK
Interests: clinical measurements; photoplethysmography; sensors and instrumentation; pulse oximetry; biomedical optics; signal processing; in vitro tissue modelling
Dr. Meha Qassem

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Resarch Centre for Biomedical Engineering, School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, City, University of London, Northampton Square, London, EC1V 0HB, UK
Interests: VIS/NIR spectroscopy; diffuse reflectance spectroscopy; fluorescence spectroscopy; multivariate data analysis; in vitro and in vivo measurements; optical sensors; multimodal and embedded systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Almost every decision relating to the prognosis, diagnosis, treatment, and routine clinical monitoring of patients cannot be done without the assistance of medical technologies. The increased capabilities of sensing technologies have, in turn, led to researchers, clinicians, and policymakers becoming increasingly interested in the potential of these technologies. The recording of physiological and psychological variables in real-life conditions could be especially useful in the management of chronic disorders or other health challenges, e.g., high blood pressure, diabetes, anorexia nervosa, chronic pain, severe obesity, stress, epilepsy, depression, and many others. Public attitudes towards technology and wellbeing have also evolved, and there is great interest amongst the general public in personalised healthcare. Such attitudes have inspired the development of intelligent sensor technologies, predominantly those related to non-invasive monitoring of various physiological parameters in homes, businesses, and health clubs. Real-time and long-term monitoring of health could be useful for measurement of treatment effects at home—i.e., in a situation where subjects feel most comfortable.

Moreover, increasing life expectancy accompanied with decreasing dependency ratio in developed countries calls for new solutions to support independent living of the elderly and other vulnerable groups. Wearable sensor technologies may provide an integral part of the solution for providing healthcare to a growing world population that will be strained by a ballooning aging population. Potential applications of these proposed technologies may include early diagnosis of diseases such as congestive heart failure, the prevention and/or management of chronic conditions such as diabetes, improved clinical management of neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, and the ability to promptly respond to emergency situations such as seizures in patients with epilepsy and cardiac arrest. In addition, employing wearable technology in professions where people are exposed to extreme environments, dangers, or hazards could help save lives and protect healthcare personnel.

The focus of this Special Issue is on Biomedical Optical sensors. Optical sensing technologies have been widely adopted in the field of biomedical engineering for clinical and consumer applications as well as for research purposes. Tissue optics and the optical properties of various biocompatible materials and biological substances is of vast interest in medicine. Optical monitoring and analysis not only provide a powerful fingerprinting technique for various biological substances, but also provides a non-invasive tool for physiological monitoring. Continual developments and advancements in optical measuring techniques, as well as novel methods of analyses, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, are opening up new possibilities in biomedical sensing that extend beyond applications related to physiological health to include mental health monitoring, drug delivery and tracking, compliance monitoring, and personal wearable technologies.

Prof. Dr. Panicos Kyriacou
Dr. James May
Dr. Meha Qassem
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • optical sensors and instrumentation
  • optical biosensors
  • optical spectroscopy
  • wearable sensors and devices
  • physiological signal analysis
  • drug delivery and tracking
  • smart technology
  • data science
  • big data
  • artificial intelligence
  • machine learning

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

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17 pages, 6441 KiB  
Article
Effects of Contact Pressure in Reflectance Photoplethysmography in an In Vitro Tissue-Vessel Phantom
by James M. May, Elisa Mejía-Mejía, Michelle Nomoni, Karthik Budidha, Changmok Choi and Panicos A. Kyriacou
Sensors 2021, 21(24), 8421; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21248421 - 16 Dec 2021
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3633
Abstract
With the continued development and rapid growth of wearable technologies, PPG has become increasingly common in everyday consumer devices such as smartphones and watches. There is, however, minimal knowledge on the effect of the contact pressure exerted by the sensor device on the [...] Read more.
With the continued development and rapid growth of wearable technologies, PPG has become increasingly common in everyday consumer devices such as smartphones and watches. There is, however, minimal knowledge on the effect of the contact pressure exerted by the sensor device on the PPG signal and how it might affect its morphology and the parameters being calculated. This study explores a controlled in vitro study to investigate the effect of continually applied contact pressure on PPG signals (signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and 17 morphological PPG features) from an artificial tissue-vessel phantom across a range of simulated blood pressure values. This experiment confirmed that for reflectance PPG signal measurements for a given anatomical model, there exists an optimum sensor contact pressure (between 35.1 mmHg and 48.1 mmHg). Statistical analysis shows that temporal morphological features are less affected by contact pressure, lending credit to the hypothesis that for some physiological parameters, such as heart rate and respiration rate, the contact pressure of the sensor is of little significance, whereas the amplitude and geometric features can show significant change, and care must be taken when using morphological analysis for parameters such as SpO2 and assessing autonomic responses. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Sensors in Health and Wellbeing)
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12 pages, 2752 KiB  
Article
Design and Analysis of a Continuous and Non-Invasive Multi-Wavelength Optical Sensor for Measurement of Dermal Water Content
by Mohammad Mamouei, Subhasri Chatterjee, Meysam Razban, Meha Qassem and Panayiotis A. Kyriacou
Sensors 2021, 21(6), 2162; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21062162 - 19 Mar 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2866
Abstract
Dermal water content is an important biophysical parameter in preserving skin integrity and preventing skin damage. Traditional electrical-based and open-chamber evaporimeters have several well-known limitations. In particular, such devices are costly, sizeable, and only provide arbitrary outputs. They also do not permit continuous [...] Read more.
Dermal water content is an important biophysical parameter in preserving skin integrity and preventing skin damage. Traditional electrical-based and open-chamber evaporimeters have several well-known limitations. In particular, such devices are costly, sizeable, and only provide arbitrary outputs. They also do not permit continuous and non-invasive monitoring of dermal water content, which can be beneficial for various consumer, clinical, and cosmetic purposes. We report here on the design and development of a digital multi-wavelength optical sensor that performs continuous and non-invasive measurement of dermal water content. In silico investigation on porcine skin was carried out using the Monte Carlo modeling strategy to evaluate the feasibility and characterize the sensor. Subsequently, an in vitro experiment was carried out to evaluate the performance of the sensor and benchmark its accuracy against a high-end, broad band spectrophotometer. Reference measurements were made against gravimetric analysis. The results demonstrate that the developed sensor can deliver accurate, continuous, and non-invasive measurement of skin hydration through measurement of dermal water content. Remarkably, the novel design of the sensor exceeded the performance of the high-end spectrophotometer due to the important denoising effects of temporal averaging. The authors believe, in addition to wellbeing and skin health monitoring, the designed sensor can particularly facilitate disease management in patients presenting diabetes mellitus, hypothyroidism, malnutrition, and atopic dermatitis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Sensors in Health and Wellbeing)
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11 pages, 668 KiB  
Communication
Comparison of Dual Beam Dispersive and FTNIR Spectroscopy for Lactate Detection
by Nystha Baishya, Mohammad Mamouei, Karthik Budidha, Meha Qassem, Pankaj Vadgama and Panayiotis A. Kyriacou
Sensors 2021, 21(5), 1891; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21051891 - 08 Mar 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2324
Abstract
Near Infrared (800–2500 nm) spectroscopy has been extensively used in biomedical applications, as it offers rapid, in vivo, bed-side monitoring of important haemodynamic parameters, which is especially important in critical care settings. However, the choice of NIR spectrometer needs to be investigated for [...] Read more.
Near Infrared (800–2500 nm) spectroscopy has been extensively used in biomedical applications, as it offers rapid, in vivo, bed-side monitoring of important haemodynamic parameters, which is especially important in critical care settings. However, the choice of NIR spectrometer needs to be investigated for biomedical applications, as both the dual beam dispersive spectrophotomer and the FTNIR spectrometer have their own advantages and disadvantages. In this study, predictive analysis of lactate concentrations in whole blood were undertaken using multivariate techniques on spectra obtained from the two spectrometer types simultaneously and results were compared. Results showed significant improvement in predicting analyte concentration when analysis was performed on full range spectral data. This is in comparison to analysis of limited spectral regions or lactate signature peaks, which yielded poorer prediction models. Furthermore, for the same region, FTNIR showed 10% better predictive capability than the dual beam dispersive NIR spectrometer. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Sensors in Health and Wellbeing)
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16 pages, 6402 KiB  
Article
Identification and Quantitative Determination of Lactate Using Optical Spectroscopy—Towards a Noninvasive Tool for Early Recognition of Sepsis
by Karthik Budidha, Mohammad Mamouei, Nystha Baishya, Meha Qassem, Pankaj Vadgama and Panayiotis A. Kyriacou
Sensors 2020, 20(18), 5402; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s20185402 - 21 Sep 2020
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4760
Abstract
Uninterrupted monitoring of serum lactate levels is a prerequisite in the critical care of patients prone to sepsis, cardiogenic shock, cardiac arrest, or severe lung disease. Yet there exists no device to continuously measure blood lactate in clinical practice. Optical spectroscopy together with [...] Read more.
Uninterrupted monitoring of serum lactate levels is a prerequisite in the critical care of patients prone to sepsis, cardiogenic shock, cardiac arrest, or severe lung disease. Yet there exists no device to continuously measure blood lactate in clinical practice. Optical spectroscopy together with multivariate analysis is proposed as a viable noninvasive tool for estimation of lactate in blood. As an initial step towards this goal, we inspected the plausibility of predicting the concentration of sodium lactate (NaLac) from the UV/visible, near-infrared (NIR), and mid-infrared (MIR) spectra of 37 isotonic phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) samples containing NaLac ranging from 0 to 20 mmol/L. UV/visible (300–800 nm) and NIR (800–2600 nm) spectra of PBS samples were collected using the PerkinElmer Lambda 1050 dual-beam spectrophotometer, while MIR (4000–500 cm−1) spectra were collected using the Spectrum two FTIR spectrometer. Absorption bands in the spectra of all three regions were identified and functional groups were assigned. The concentration of lactate in samples was predicted using the Partial Least-Squares (PLS) regression analysis and leave-one-out cross-validation. The regression analysis showed a correlation coefficient (R2) of 0.926, 0.977, and 0.992 for UV/visible, NIR, and MIR spectra, respectively, between the predicted and reference samples. The RMSECV of UV/visible, NIR, and MIR spectra was 1.59, 0.89, and 0.49 mmol/L, respectively. The results indicate that optical spectroscopy together with multivariate models can achieve a superior technique in assessing lactate concentrations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Sensors in Health and Wellbeing)
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13 pages, 5882 KiB  
Article
Novel Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) Pulsatile Vascular Tissue Phantoms for the In-Vitro Investigation of Light Tissue Interaction in Photoplethysmography
by Michelle Nomoni, James M. May and Panayiotis A. Kyriacou
Sensors 2020, 20(15), 4246; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s20154246 - 30 Jul 2020
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3863
Abstract
Currently there exists little knowledge or work in phantoms for the in-vitro evaluation of photoplethysmography (PPG), and its’ relationship with vascular mechanics. Such phantoms are needed to provide robust, basic scientific knowledge, which will underpin the current efforts in developing new PPG technologies [...] Read more.
Currently there exists little knowledge or work in phantoms for the in-vitro evaluation of photoplethysmography (PPG), and its’ relationship with vascular mechanics. Such phantoms are needed to provide robust, basic scientific knowledge, which will underpin the current efforts in developing new PPG technologies for measuring or estimating blood pressure, blood flow and arterial stiffness, to name but a few. This work describes the design, fabrication and evaluation of finger tissue-simulating pulsatile phantoms with integrated custom vessels. A novel technique has been developed to produce custom polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) vessels by a continuous dip-coating process. This process can accommodate the production of different sized vessel diameters (1400–2500 µm) and wall thicknesses (56–80 µm). These vessels were embedded into a mould with a solution of PDMS and India ink surrounding them. A pulsatile pump experimental rig was set up to test the phantoms, where flow rate (1–12 L·min−1), heart rate (40–120 bpm), and total resistance (0–100% resistance clamps) could be controlled on demand. The resulting flow profiles approximates human blood flow, and the detected contact PPG signal (red and infrared) from the phantom closely resembles the morphology of in-vivo PPG waveforms with signal-to-noise ratios of 38.16 and 40.59 dB, for the red and infrared wavelengths, respectively. The progress made by this phantom development will help in obtaining new knowledge in the behaviour of PPG’s under differing flow conditions, optical tissue properties and differing vessel stiffness. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Sensors in Health and Wellbeing)
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Review

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28 pages, 5531 KiB  
Review
Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
by María Roldán and Panayiotis A. Kyriacou
Sensors 2021, 21(5), 1586; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21051586 - 24 Feb 2021
Cited by 35 | Viewed by 11948
Abstract
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs when a sudden trauma causes damage to the brain. TBI can result when the head suddenly and violently impacts an object or when an object pierces the skull and enters brain tissue. Secondary injuries after traumatic brain injury [...] Read more.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs when a sudden trauma causes damage to the brain. TBI can result when the head suddenly and violently impacts an object or when an object pierces the skull and enters brain tissue. Secondary injuries after traumatic brain injury (TBI) can lead to impairments on cerebral oxygenation and autoregulation. Considering that secondary brain injuries often take place within the first hours after the trauma, noninvasive monitoring might be helpful in providing early information on the brain’s condition. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is an emerging noninvasive monitoring modality based on chromophore absorption of infrared light with the capability of monitoring perfusion of the brain. This review investigates the main applications of NIRS in TBI monitoring and presents a thorough revision of those applications on oxygenation and autoregulation monitoring. Databases such as PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Scopus, and Cochrane library were utilized in identifying 72 publications spanning between 1977 and 2020 which were directly relevant to this review. The majority of the evidence found used NIRS for diagnosis applications, especially in oxygenation and autoregulation monitoring (59%). It was not surprising that nearly all the patients were male adults with severe trauma who were monitored mostly with continue wave NIRS or spatially resolved spectroscopy NIRS and an invasive monitoring device. In general, a high proportion of the assessed papers have concluded that NIRS could be a potential noninvasive technique for assessing TBI, despite the various methodological and technological limitations of NIRS. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Sensors in Health and Wellbeing)
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