Simulator with Photon and Arbitrarily Arranged RBC for Hematocrit Estimation

This paper introduces a simulator to estimate density of red blood cells (RBCs) from optical intensity based on blood properties of optical absorption and scattering model. The simulator will be directly used to estimate density of RBC, which is an important index for preventing thrombosis. In this simulator, Lambert-beer´s law is used to acquire transmittance of RBCs with hemoglobin absorptance, while Monte Carlo method is used to obtain scattering property through iterative calculations. One of the advantages of this simulator is that position and number of RBCs are arbitrarily arranged for hematocrit estimation, while the conventional model can not deal with. Using the simulator, transitions of optical intensity were simulated with two variables: emitter-detector distance and hematocrit. These transitions were also measured in experiments with bovine blood to evaluate the simulator model. As a result, these experiment data corresponded with the simulated data in 2.5% error of converting hematocrit. We confirmed the developed simulator model was precise enough in optical propagation, and it indicated that this simulator could be applicable to hematocrit estimation.