A compact, lightweight instrument for non-invasive blood analyte
determination employs a light source incorporating an assembly of LED's
interconnected within a thermally stable substrate. A large diameter mixer
couples the signal to a fiber optic probe for delivering the signal to a
tissue measurement site. Back-diffused light is collected and dispersed
across an array of photo detectors in a miniature spectrometer instrument.
A high-speed DSP executes an algorithm for predicting concentration of a
target analyte, which is output to a LCD display. Instrument control is by
means of keypad or voice recognition.
High conversion efficiency of the light source results in extremely low
power dissipation and virtually no heat generation, making incorporation
of the light source and the spectrometer into a single unit practicable.
High-speed pulsing of the signal allows application of high-sensitivity,
synchronous detection techniques. Speed and flexibility in sequencing
LED's allows simultaneous measurement and skin temperature control.