ABSTRACT
Department of Information Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia,
Modena, 41100 Italy
Rafat R. Ansari
NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH 44135, USA
16.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
16.2 Basic Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
16.3 Anatomy and Properties of the Human Eye of Interest for Polarimetric
Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490
16.4 Optical Access to the Aqueous: Tangential Path and Brewster Scheme
Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
16.5 Glucose Sensor Based on the Brewster Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498
16.6 Performance of the Glucose Sensor Based on the Brewster Scheme . . . . . . . . 501
16.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
The objective of this chapter is to introduce a new optical concept for measuring
glucose concentration in the aqueous humor. This concept involves reflecting the
incident circularly polarized light off of the ocular lens at Brewster angle and by
detecting and analyzing the linearly polarized light as it traverses through the eye’s
anterior chamber. This light acts as a glucose measuring “tool” by giving information
on the optical activity of the glucose molecules present in the aqueous. Potentially
this technique can be very useful in the management of diabetes.