A benign way of measuring hemoglobin in blood – Towards developing a non-invasive technique

Abstract

Hemoglobin, the protein that gives blood its bright red color, has always been an essential part of diagnosing if any anomaly regarding blood can be found in the human body. The lack of hemoglobin in the blood can cause many diseases like hemophilia, skin irritation, nervousness, etc. And the brightness of the red color of the blood can be reduced. This research aims to develop an advanced non-invasive method to determine hemoglobin utilizing infrared light. The emitted infrared light is reflected from the surface of printed different shades of red color (Different red pixel values) papers. The infrared detector detects the reflected light. These colored paper surfaces were used as phantoms to represent the color of blood capillaries in the inner lower eyelid. Different light intensities were reflected and produced various voltage fluctuations in the infrared detector, which was observed through an oscilloscope. The measured voltage shows a linear nature. With the increase in pixel values, the amplitude voltage also increases, which helps us easily find out the level of hemoglobin using the range of voltage. The obtained result successfully helps us find out the range of hemoglobin counts. The World Health Organization's (WHO's) hemoglobin color scale can be used to evaluate hemoglobin measurement. This approach can assess the proportion of hemoglobin in the inner lower eyelid. The preliminary results hold high potential in measuring hemoglobin non-invasively and require further in-depth study for the clinical trial.