Proc. of 2014 IEEE 5th International Conference on Photonics (ICP), Kuala Lumpur, 2-4 Sept.
2014
Photon counting polarimetry measurement towards
non-invasive biomedical glucose monitoring
Mohd Norzaliman Mohd Zain, Afiqah Musa, Mohd Hafizulfika Hisham, Abdur Rehman Laili,
Zalhan Md Yusof
Photonics Lab, MIMOS Berhad Malaysia,Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
zman@mimos.my
Abstract—Commercially available glucose measurement device
for diabetes monitoring require extracting of blood and this
means there will be a physical contact with human body. Demand
on non-invasive measurement has invites research and develop-
ment of new detection methods to measure blood glucose level.
In this work, a very sensitive optical polarimetry measurement
technique using ratio-metric photon counting detection has been
introduced and tested for a range of known glucose concen-
trations that mimic the level of glucose in human blood. The
setup utilizes 785nm diode laser that emits weak coherent optical
signal onto glucose concentration samples in aqueous. The result
shows a linear proportional of different glucose concentration
and successfully detected 10 mg/dl to 260 mg/dl glucose samples.
This indicates a potential improvement method for non-invasive
glucose measurement by a sensitive polarimetry based optical
sensor in single photon level for biomedical applications.
Index Terms—non-invasive; polarimetry measurement; single
photon; biomedical
I. I NTRODUCTION
There were many research works in developing non-invasive
glucose monitoring devices utilizing optical techniques for
diabetes [1]–[15]. It had been a significant research as this
approach would improve method of health monitoring. Some
of the techniques are spectroscopy [1], confocal reflectometry
[2], optical coherence tomography [3] and polarimetry [4].
The polarimetry method can be described as a propagation of
a single plane polarized light beam being rotated to certain
degree after passes through optically active molecules. Since
glucose is a chiral molecule, it has the ability to rotate plane
polarized light that passed through along the propagation axis
and become the basis for all current polarimetric techniques.
The plane polarized light source has different propagation
speed due to different indices of refractions in the compound.
Glucose compound consists of asymmetrical molecules. These
polarization rotation will reflect the concentration of glucose
molecules [5]. In biomedical application, the polarimetry
method is more preferably works on transparent tissue of
human body specifically the eyes. It is nearly impossible to
be applied on human skin. It will introduce about 30 minute
time delay for a consistent result between blood glucose and
the aqueous glucose exist in the eyes due to the blood glucose
diffuse slowly through the semi-permeable membrane to the
aqueous humor medium [6].
978-1-4799-4883-3/14/$31.00
2014
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II. BACKGROUND
The relationship between the polarization rotation angle and
glucose concentration is given by the following equation.
α
[α]λ,T = (1)
lD
[α] is rotatory power of the molecular glucose at a particular
wavelength, λ and temperature, T . A measured optical rotation
α when a plane polarized light is passed through a sample
with concentration, D in g/ml at a path length l decimeter.
The intrinsic properties of polarized coherent light beam while
entering complex turbid tissue with high scattering media such
as the eyes has been studied [7] by using Muller matrix
and Monte Carlo model from the Stokes parameters data
observed from the experimental. A few experiments have
been conducted to measure in-vivo and in-vitro glucose level
using the polarimetry technique for diabetic [6], [7], [10].
However, there is no known polarimetry experimental works
for glucose measurement in photon counting region reported
yet. In this paper, an experiment with polarized single coherent
wavelength from attenuated laser source has been setup for
measuring glucose concentration in photon counting level.
The setup will able to detect low level glucose concentration.
Different sample of glucose concentrations ranges have been
prepared that reassembles the physiological blood glucose
level in human.
III. E XPERIMENTAL S ETUP
The experiment setup consists of an optical setup and
glucose samples preparation. The samples were prepared for
different glucose concentration. One aqueous sample without
glucose was also prepared as a reference.
Sample preparation process: In this work, there were
fifteen glucose samples including a reference have been tested.
Glucose concentrations ranges from 10mg/dl to 260mg/dl with
interval of 20mg/dl were prepared. Alpha-D-Glucose powder
from Sigma Aldrich was dissolved in 100 ml of deionized
water to form 0.09 M standard solution. The range of glucose
level is prepared by dilution process using a pipette. 3ml
each from fifteen different concentration samples were put
alternately into the NIR quartz cell. A single quartz cell is
used to repeat the measurements in every sample to avoid
large variations. The quartz cell has two clear windows to
allow light from 220 to 3800 nm wavelength to enter and
Proc. of 2014 IEEE 5th International Conference on Photonics (ICP), Kuala Lumpur, 2-4 Sept. 2014
follow the international standard dimension size with 10 mm
path length.
Fig. 1: The experimental layout for glucose concentration
characterization utilizing weak coherent light beam
Optical Apparatus: The experimental setup used to char-
acterize polarization angle differences depicts in Fig. 1. The
weak coherent photon source generated by the 785nm diode
laser (Cube Coherent, 785-40C) and variable attenuator (Thor-
labs, NDC-50C-4M) propagates pass through an optical Glan-
Tylor polarizer (Thorlabs, GT-10) and a quarter wave plate
(Lattice, CWO-R10) onto the glucose sample. Combination of
both optical lenses will produce a circular right or circular left
polarization state. The polarized optical beam characterized by
a polarimeter (Thorlabs, PAN5004). The polarized light beam
will pass through the glucose sample at different concentration
prepared earlier. The weak coherent light beam after passed
through the sample then coupled to a fiber using an objective
lens (Thorlabs, RMS20X) before detected by the photon
counting measurement system (Sensl, PCSTime). The data
taken will be analyzed in a computer and the results were
discussed at the next section.
IV. R ESULT AND D ISCUSSION
In the experiment setup, the glucose samples were placed
into the 1cm × 1cm NIR quartz cell on a mechanical ro-
tation stage. Changes between sample concentrations were
carefully done by using a pipette hence quartz cell remained
static. The experiment is done in dark room to reduce the
background noise from surrounding stray light. A polarized
coherent optical signal is generated by the diode laser after
passing through the polarizer at a certain polarization state.
The polarization state of the optical signal in the setup is set
to either a circular left or circular right. This polarization state
is characterized by using a polarimeter. The bright laser beam
is attenuated using optical density filter to produce a weak
pulse optical signal. The weak pulse optical signal is set at low
mean photon number per pulse which statistically calculated
according to Poison distribution. In this experiment, the photon
counting module measured at the rate of 12 308 photon counts
in the absence of glucose molecule and maximum at 13 693
photon counts at 260 mg/dl glucose concentration in the quartz
cell.
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Fig. 2: The normalized photon counts for different glucose
concentration levels
As the glucose concentration increased, the photon counting
module detects higher intensity or photon counts shown in
Fig. 2. Data from few experimental sessions were collected
and averaged. The measurement is done for every 20 mg/dl
increment until it reached 260 mg/dl glucose concentration.
In this experiment, the setup is capable to measure glucose
concentration as low as 10 mg/dl. The result indicates the
intensity detected by the photon counting system for different
glucose concentration was determined by the azimuth angle,
θm of incident polarized coherent light beam. At first, the
optical signal propagation is positioned at the azimuth angle,
θm incident with the glucose sample placed in the cuvette. The
incident polarized light beam need to rotate θs away from the
original optical path as depicted in Fig. 1. The rotation angle,
θs is the angle between the original optical path of the sample
to the detector and incident optical path set in the experiment.
The output intensity detected is given by [6].
Im = A sin 2(θs + θm ) cos(∆ωt) (2)
where A is the amplitude of the coherent optical beam and
(θs + θm ) < 5◦ . Equation (2) above can be expressed as
Im = 2A(θs + θm ) cos(∆ωt) (3)
At zero glucose concentration, θm ≈ 0
Io = 2Aθs cos(∆ωt) (4)
For non-zero concentration,
|∆I| = |Im Io | ∼
= 2Aθm (5)
In general, the detector will detect higher intensity for
greater glucose concentration. This is because of an observed
higher rotation angles, ∆θm of the polarized photon detected
indicates more glucose molecules present in the sample.
However, the water molecules presented in the sample do not
influence the rotation angle due to the symmetrical structure of
the water molecules. Our experimental result is in agreement
with Wang et. al finding, [6] using bright Zeeman laser
Proc. of 2014 IEEE 5th International Conference on Photonics (ICP), Kuala Lumpur, 2-4 Sept. 2014

source onto rabbit eye. The result shows the optical rotation [15] F. H. Mustafa, X. Yi, C. Jin, and A. L. McEwan, “Polarimetric tech-
angle of polarized attenuated laser source change is linearly nologies in non-invasive glucose monitoring,” in Australian Biomedical
Engineering Conference, 2013.
proportional for varies glucose concentrations.

V. C ONCLUSION
This study shows a non-invasive measurement of glucose
concentration based on photon counting polarimetry measure-
ment. Low limit of measured detection obtained at 10 mg/dl
with interval of 20 mg/dl until 260 mg/dl. This indicates
the setup is highly sensitive and able to detect very low
concentration of glucose. Therefore, this photon counting
polarimetry technique will make a very sensitive and a good
optical glucose sensor.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The author would like to thank Mohd Fared Abdul Khir for
fruitful discussion and Maizatul Zolkapli on preparation of the
document.

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