Evaluation of NIR LED and laser diode as a light source in diffuse reflectance spectroscopy system for intravenous fluid infiltration detection under dermis layer of skin phantom

This study evaluates the performance of near-infrared (NIR) LED and laser diode as light sources for detecting intravenous fluid (IV) infiltration under dermis layer of skin phantom using diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS). A commercially available and relatively cheap NIR LED (950 nm) and laser diode (980 nm) were employed, and a laboratory DRS system was transformed into a portable prototype with Internet of Things (IoT) integration for smartphone data acquisition. The results demonstrate that both laboratory and prototype DRS systems successfully detected IV fluid as low as 0.1 ml beneath the dermis layer of skin phantom. Notably, the DRS sensitivity using the laser diode light source surpassed that of the LED, both in the laboratory and prototype DRS systems. These findings highlight the high potential of NIR laser diodes in DRS systems for highly sensitive infiltration detection.