Glucose Sensing in Flowing Blood and Intralipid by Laser Pulse Time-of-Flight and Optical Coherence Tomography Techniques

In this paper, we compare the sensitivities of the two optical modalities, laser pulse time-of-flight (TOF) and optical coherence tomography (OCT), in regard to glucose sensing within the range of 0–1000 mg/dL in flowing blood and tissue-mimicking liquid (Intralipid). We show that TOF technique is more sensitive than OCT, as well for blood as for Intralipid measurements. In the case of TOF technique, glucose sensitivity in Intralipid is higher than in blood. We speculate that all this is associated with longer pathlengths of detected photons in TOF than in OCT, which is confirmed by comparison with Monte Carlo simulations.