Picture of the setup used. Credit score: G Puneeth
Blood glucose is normally measured utilizing invasive strategies involving pricking small needles into the pores and skin. However individuals affected by diabetes have to check their glucose ranges many instances a day. This repeated use of needles is inconvenient and may enhance the chance of potential infections.
A brand new examine by researchers on the Division of Instrumentation and Utilized Physics (IAP), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) affords another resolution through a way referred to as photoacoustic sensing.
The work is printed within the journal Science Advances.
On this approach, when a laser beam is shined on organic tissue, the tissue parts soak up the sunshine and the tissue heats up barely (lower than 1°C). This causes the tissue to increase and contract, creating vibrations which will be picked up as ultrasonic sound waves by delicate detectors. Totally different supplies and molecules contained in the tissue soak up totally different quantities of the incident gentle at totally different wavelengths, creating particular person “fingerprints” within the emitted sound waves. Importantly, this process doesn’t harm the tissue pattern being studied.
Within the present examine, the staff exploited this method to measure the focus of a single molecule, particularly glucose. They used polarized gentle—a light-weight wave that oscillates solely in a particular route. Sun shades, for instance, scale back glare by blocking out gentle waves that oscillate in sure instructions.
Glucose is a chiral molecule, which signifies that it has an inherent structural asymmetry that causes polarized gentle to rotate its orientation of oscillation when it interacts with the molecule. Surprisingly, the staff discovered that the depth of the emitted sound waves modified when the orientation of the polarized gentle interacting with glucose within the resolution was modified.
“We don’t actually know why the acoustic signal changes when we change the polarization state. But we can establish a relationship between the glucose concentration and the intensity of the acoustic signal at a particular wavelength,” explains Jaya Prakash, Assistant Professor in IAP and corresponding writer of the examine.
FIST lab group members engaged on growing photoacoustic sensing/imaging applied sciences. Credit score: G Puneeth
Glucose rotates the polarized gentle and the rotation will increase with focus, which is mirrored within the acoustic sign depth. Subsequently, measuring the energy of the acoustic sign allowed the researchers to work backwards and estimate the focus of glucose.
The researchers had been capable of estimate glucose focus in water and serum options in addition to slices of animal tissue with close to scientific accuracy. They had been additionally capable of measure glucose focus at varied depths throughout the tissue precisely.
“If we know the speed of sound in this tissue, we can use the time-series data to map our acoustic signals to the depth at which they are coming from,” explains Swathi Padmanabhan, Ph.D. pupil and first writer of the paper. Since sound waves do not scatter a lot inside tissue, the researchers had been capable of get correct measurements at varied tissue depths.
The staff has additionally performed a pilot examine during which they used the sensor setup to trace the blood glucose concentrations of a wholesome participant earlier than and after meals over three days.
“Finding the right setup to do this experiment was very challenging. Currently, the laser source we use has to generate very small nanosecond pulses, so it is expensive and bulky. We need to make it more compact to put it to clinical use. My lab mates have already started work on this,” says Padmanabhan.
The authors consider that theoretically, this method can work for any chiral molecule by altering the sunshine wavelength. Within the examine, they had been additionally capable of estimate the focus of naproxen—a generally used drug for delicate ache and irritation—in an ethanol resolution. As many generally used medication are chiral in nature, such a way can have wide-ranging purposes in well being care and diagnostics.
Extra info:
Swathi Padmanabhan et al, Deep tissue sensing of chiral molecules utilizing polarization-enhanced photoacoustics, Science Advances (2025). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado8012
Offered by
Indian Institute of Science
Quotation:
Painless approach can estimate glucose concentrations in resolution and tissue through sound waves (2025, March 20)
retrieved 20 March 2025
from https://medicalxpress.com/information/2025-03-painless-technique-glucose-solution-tissue.html
This doc is topic to copyright. Aside from any truthful dealing for the aim of personal examine or analysis, no
half could also be reproduced with out the written permission. The content material is offered for info functions solely.
