Tomsk State University scientists are developing a new technology, a noninvasive glucose meter. By 2021, they will create a working laboratory model of an electromagnetic sensor that accurately determines the concentration of glucose in the blood.
Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common diseases, ranking third after cardiovascular and oncological diseases. According to the WHO, the number of people with diabetes has increased almost fourfold since 1980 - in 2016 it is about 422 million adults worldwide. In most cases, controlling the concentration of glucose in the blood of patients avoids complications, disability, and death, so the creation of accurate noninvasive technologies that do not require regular finger pricking for blood sampling is important.
- The accuracy of modern noninvasive blood glucose meters is far from perfect, because of the presence of a protective skin and muscle cover of a person. Overcoming this is a kind of stumbling block in the way of creating an effective noninvasive device for assessing the level of glucose in the blood. As a rule, it is the skin and the parameters of the internal environment that introduce significant errors in the data, - says Ksenia Zavyalova, project manager, a researcher at the TSU Methods, Systems, and Security Technologies Laboratory at SPhTI. - Our new concept will ensure superiority over the existing analogs in the world in accuracy of determination. It is based on the study of the so-called near-field effect in a wide frequency band.
Radio emission is divided into near and far from the source of the zone. They almost always try to reduce the near zone in order to increase the antenna efficiency. At the same time, in environments with high absorption (earth, water), the wave attenuates very quickly. Falling on the human body, the radio wave is very quickly absorbed in the very first millimeters of the skin and does not pass inside the person.
TSU radiophysicists have found that the field in the near zone is not weakened, which means that it can penetrate well inside a person. For this, it is necessary to expand the boundary of the near zone, for example, by creating a special sensor. Further, by varying the frequency of the radiation, it is possible to control the penetration of electromagnetic waves into the human body and carry out diagnostics, for example, bring the near zone to the blood vessels to analyze the glucose concentration.
- As a result, we will create a noninvasive glucose meter technology and a current laboratory model of the electromagnetic sensor. For this, a method of managing the depth of the near zone will be developed, -explains Ksenia Zavyalova. - The results will be used to develop new noncontact, effective, and commercially available medical radio-based diagnostic devices. In the future, technology can be the basis for further more in-depth studies of tissues and the processes of change in them.