특허기반 연구개발: 바이오센서(PPG센서)를 이용한 비침습적 당화혈색소 측정

Hemoglobin, a type of protein found in red blood cells, plays a major role in transporting oxygen by combining with oxygen in the blood, and also binds to blood glucose present in the blood. Hemoglobin combined with glucose is called glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c). Glycated hemoglobin reflects an increase in blood glucose level as more glucose in blood binds more hemoglobin and glucose in red blood cells. The level of glycated hemoglobin refers to the percentage of glycated hemoglobin to the total number of hemoglobin. The glycated hemoglobin level reflects the average of blood glucose levels for about 3 months, and diabetes can be measured more accurately than blood glucose measurement using this. Since all conventional methods of measuring glycated hemoglobin correspond to invasive measurement methods, there is a problem in that the measurement increases the blood collection burden for the subjects and provides inaccurate values when they have external diseases such as pregnancy and kidney diseases. As an alternative to this, a method of measuring diabetes noninvasively using an optical sensor has been studied, but this non-invasive measurement method has a disadvantage in that it is less accurate than the conventional invasive method. To overcome these shortcomings, this study developed a method for non invasively measuring glycated hemoglobin using a Photoplethymography (PPG) sensor based on prior patent research. In this study, we describe robust patent applications and registrations through a preliminary patent search for non-invasive HbA1c and blood-glucose estimation methods, and deal with publications in the SCI journals using the research and development contents based on the patents. Furthermore, we are developing a patent-based non-invasive glycated hemoglobin estimation algorithm and device, which is expected to be a breakthrough in terms of convenience and cost for users.