Rapid prototyping of neonatal jaundice detector using skin optics theory

When newborns present with jaundice, various clinical assessment need to be executed including evaluation of the history, physical examination, and assessment of severity of jaundice. This project concerns with the quantification of neonatal jaundice level using Simulink model-based design. It is important to address that the proposed method is non-invasive, hence suitable for infants. In this project, the concentration level of bilirubin in dermis layer of skin has been detected using skin optic theory with light emitting diode (LED) and photodiode as a detector. To evaluate the proposed system, a mock skin soaking is used to replace the real infant´s skin. At the system level, Arduino Uno has been used as a hardware platform, whilst MATLAB and Simulink have been fully utilised to implement the system´s architecture. An evaluation of the proposed systems reveals its capability to detect, process and display real-time results with three (3) levels of jaundice, including normal, mild and critical.