Abstract

Care of patients in hospitals require often the routine determination of various critical blood analytes in untreated blood. The partial pressure of CO₂ and O₂ are the most important within the so-called blood gases, H⁺ (i.e. pH), Na⁺, K⁺, Ca²⁺ and Cl^- are the significant blood electrolytes, and lactate, glucose, hemoglobin and creatinine are the crucial blood metabolites. We are developing a rugged miniaturized opto-electronic device to measure these analytes. In this work we will report the results obtained with a six channel, all-solid state, miniaturized fluorescence instrument, featuring super-blue LEDs as excitation sources, μ-optics to input/output light, and photodiodes as light detectors assembled according to pigtailing¹ procedures. The six fluorescence channels can be used to determine the concentration of various blood analytes by selecting the appropriate combination of excitation light (i.e. LED and excitation filter), emission filter and sensing membrane. The performance of this instrument has been evaluated in terms of response, reproducibility, reversibility, photo-bleaching of indicator, selectivity etc..

© 1996 Optical Society of America