Effect on blood glucose monitoring of skin pressure exerted by an optical coherence tomography probe.

We proposed to use optical coherence tomography (OCT) for continuous noninvasive blood glucose monitoring, and recently we significantly improved the sensitivity of this technique. The accuracy of OCT glucose monitoring is limited by several factors, including variation of tissue pressure exerted by the OCT probe. We studied the influence of high (>10 kPa) and low (<1 kPa) pressure levels on OCT blood glucose monitoring. We showed that controlling external pressure to <1 kPa substantially improved the accuracy and reproducibility of OCT-based glucose monitoring.