Light-based medical sensors assessing the parathyroid gland oxygenation during thyroid surgery
Disciplines
Biomedical
Abstract (300 words maximum)
Throughout the U.S. nearly 20 million people are suffering from various thyroid diseases annually; out of those 150,000 thyroidectomies, the entire removal and replacement of the thyroid, are performed yearly. However, a common complication after thyroidectomy is postoperative Hypocalcemia. Hypocalcemia can limit the patient’s ability to produce enough Calcium resulting in constant visits to the hospital and life-long supplements, becoming a severe financial burden. Thus, preservation of healthy PTG during thyroidectomy is critical. Currently, surgeons use near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) imaging using indocyanine green (ICG) dyes to predict PTG vascularization efficiently, but due to delayed response time, the potential of being toxic to patients, and devascularized PTGs not sending the ICG dye properly through the gland, it can lead to an inaccurate reading. To address these unmet medical needs, we built and tested a low-cost and portable medical device that uses a method called diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). DRS sends a broad-band visible light through an optic fiber to the tissue surface and collects reflectance spectra of reemitted photons that have interacted with while traveling inside the tissues. The application of an analytical model on the obtained PTG reflectance spectra can determine the amount of deoxygenated/oxygenated hemoglobin concentration and tissue oxygenation, thus allowing for a non-invasive assessment of PTG viability. To demonstrate the feasibility of DRS, we have performed a computational verification using the simulated diffuse reflectance spectra on a wide range of tissue hemoglobin concentrations and oxygenation. The estimation accuracy on the simulated spectra with up to 10% random noise is less than 15%. We are currently working on a bench-top experimental verification with tissue-simulating phantoms mimicking tissue oxygenation levels. This compact, affordable DRS system has the potential not only to help surgeons predict hypocalcemia post-operation but can be expanded out towards predicting other internal oxygen deficiencies as well.
Academic department under which the project should be listed
SPCEET - Electrical and Computer Engineering
Primary Investigator (PI) Name
Paul Lee
Light-based medical sensors assessing the parathyroid gland oxygenation during thyroid surgery
Throughout the U.S. nearly 20 million people are suffering from various thyroid diseases annually; out of those 150,000 thyroidectomies, the entire removal and replacement of the thyroid, are performed yearly. However, a common complication after thyroidectomy is postoperative Hypocalcemia. Hypocalcemia can limit the patient’s ability to produce enough Calcium resulting in constant visits to the hospital and life-long supplements, becoming a severe financial burden. Thus, preservation of healthy PTG during thyroidectomy is critical. Currently, surgeons use near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) imaging using indocyanine green (ICG) dyes to predict PTG vascularization efficiently, but due to delayed response time, the potential of being toxic to patients, and devascularized PTGs not sending the ICG dye properly through the gland, it can lead to an inaccurate reading. To address these unmet medical needs, we built and tested a low-cost and portable medical device that uses a method called diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). DRS sends a broad-band visible light through an optic fiber to the tissue surface and collects reflectance spectra of reemitted photons that have interacted with while traveling inside the tissues. The application of an analytical model on the obtained PTG reflectance spectra can determine the amount of deoxygenated/oxygenated hemoglobin concentration and tissue oxygenation, thus allowing for a non-invasive assessment of PTG viability. To demonstrate the feasibility of DRS, we have performed a computational verification using the simulated diffuse reflectance spectra on a wide range of tissue hemoglobin concentrations and oxygenation. The estimation accuracy on the simulated spectra with up to 10% random noise is less than 15%. We are currently working on a bench-top experimental verification with tissue-simulating phantoms mimicking tissue oxygenation levels. This compact, affordable DRS system has the potential not only to help surgeons predict hypocalcemia post-operation but can be expanded out towards predicting other internal oxygen deficiencies as well.