Hyperbilirubinemia is a serious condition affecting many neonates. The hyperbilirubinemic infant presents a "yellow" skin color, and optical reflectance spectroscopy would enable continuous quantitative noninvasive monitoring of the bilirubin levels. Natural variations in skin pigmentation, erythema, water content (edema), and skin layer thickness have frustrated early monitors. This paper reports on computer simulations of light propagation in a multilayered skin model (Monte Carlo), and experimental measurements with scaled phantom models of layered skin. The goal of this work is an algorithm for reliable quantification of bilirubin despite variations in skin optics using spectra from an optical fiber probe taped onto the skin.
I. S. Saidi, S. L. Jacques, M. Keijzer, F. K. Tittel, "Optical fiber probe monitor for neonatal bilirubinemia," Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology, 2, 1201- 1202 (1989).