Muscle oxygenation measurement in humans by noninvasive optical spectroscopy and Locally Weighted Regression

• We propose a new method for measuring muscle oxygenation (Mox) from optical spectra.
• Optical reflectance spectra were measured from the hand in the visible-NIR region (540–800 nm).
• Locally Weighted Regression (LWR) with Partial Least Squares (PLS) was implemented.
• Muscle oxygenation using LWR–PLS was more accurate than standard PLS.
• Multivariate Curve Resolution can estimate Mox under controlled experimental conditions.

We have developed a method to make real-time, continuous, noninvasive measurements of muscle oxygenation (Mox) from the surface of the skin. A key development was measurement in both the visible and near infrared (NIR) regions. Measurement of both oxygenated and deoxygenated myoglobin and hemoglobin resulted in a more accurate measurement of Mox than could be achieved with measurement of only the deoxygenated components, as in traditional near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Using the second derivative with respect to wavelength reduced the effects of scattering on the spectra and also made oxygenated and deoxygenated forms more distinguishable from each other. Selecting spectral bands where oxygenated and deoxygenated forms absorb filtered out noise and spectral features unrelated to Mox. NIR and visible bands were scaled relative to each other in order to correct for errors introduced by normalization. Multivariate Curve Resolution (MCR) was used to estimate Mox from spectra within each data set collected from healthy subjects. A Locally Weighted Regression (LWR) model was built from calibration set spectra and associated Mox values from 20 subjects using 2562 spectra. LWR and Partial Least Squares (PLS) allow accurate measurement of Mox despite variations in skin pigment or fat layer thickness in different subjects. The method estimated Mox in five healthy subjects with an RMSE of 5.4%.

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