Investigation of Noninvasive in vivo Blood Hematocrit Measurement Using NIR Reflectance Spectroscopy and Partial Least-Squares Regression

Abstract

Hematocrit (Hct), the volume percent of red cells in blood, is monitored routinely for blood donors, surgical patients, and trauma victims and requires blood to be removed from the patient. An accurate, noninvasive method for directly measuring hematocrit on patients is desired for these applications. The feasibility of noninvasive hematocrit measurement by using near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and partial least-squares (PLS) techniques was investigated, and methods of in vivo calibration were examined. Twenty Caucasian patients undergoing cardiac surgery on cardiopulmonary bypass were randomly selected to form two study groups. A fiber-optic probe was attached to the patient's forearm, and NIR spectra were continuously collected during surgery. Blood samples were simultaneously collected and reference Hct measurements were made with the spun capillary method. PLS multivariate calibration techniques were applied to investigate the relationship between spectral and Hct changes. Single patient calibration models were developed with good cross-validated estimation of accuracy (∼ 1 Hct%) and trending capability for most patients. Time-dependent system drift, patient temperature, and venous oxygen saturation were not correlated with the hematocrit measurements. Multi-subject models were developed for prediction of independent subjects. These models demonstrated a significant patient-specific offset that was shown to be partially related to spectrometer drift. The remaining offset is attributed to the large spectral variability of patient tissue, and a significantly larger set of patients would be required to adequately model this variability. After the removal of the offset, the cross-validated estimation of accuracy is 2 Hct%.