Experimental Integration Of A Spatial Frequency Domain Spectroscopy And Pulse Cam System For Quantifying Changes In Skin Optical Properties And Vasculature Among Individuals With Obesity

Obesity leads to a higher risk of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Wearable devices can be used to manage and promote the healthy lifestyle among the obese by measuring heart rate, heart rate variability, perfusion, and pressure pulse-wave velocities. While operational challenges are common in wearable devices using electrical or thermal sensors, those with optical sensors are more robust. Current optical sensors rely on fluctuations in light intensity due to spatio-temporal variations in tissue absorption. The thick layer of adipose tissue in high body mass index (BMI) individuals strongly scatters light, reducing the optical contrast and signal to noise ratio. Moreover, higher BMI alters chemical concentrations- like water, oxygenation, and blood volume in the dermal layer- and thus the optical properties (OP). Although OP of the skin exists in literature, no study has strictly recorded the effect and magnitude of a higher BMI on them. In this study, we combine the spatial frequency domain spectroscopy (SFDS) with a multi-sensor blood flow imaging device (PulseCam) to characterize the OPs and monitor the vascularization in the obese. The effects of skin morphology and physiology on the performance of optical sensor are preliminarily investigated.