Optofluidic spectroscopy integrated on optical fiber platform

Administering a wrong drug or a wrong dose can be extremely dangerous and can result in severe adverse effects or even the death of a patient. With human errors being possible, automatic real time identification of a drug and its concentration using technology is a viable option to decrease the chance of incorrect drug administration. As a step toward this goal, we propose a new optical fiber based spectroscopic system that has built-in filtration capabilities and thus can work in real time near patient without additional sample pre-processing. It is designed as a point probe consisting of an optical fiber with a miniature filtering reflector integrated on the interface. In the future it can be inserted into a bag for intravenous therapy (IV therapy) or in a syringe to measure the spectrum of the fluid and to confirm its properties. Additionally, use of microfluidic filtration allows to remove microscopic particles from the sample and thus decreases the noise and increases the sensitivity of spectroscopic measurement. In this study, an optofluidic system was fabricated, and filtration capabilities and measurement of cobalamin (vitamin B12) concentration have been demonstrated.