Carbon dioxide laser based multiple ATR technique for measuring glucose in aqueous solutions

Conventional IR transmission methods are not suitable to measure accurately the concentration of biological molecules in aqueous solutions since the dominant water component has a high intrinsic absorption band over a wide range of the IR spectrum. This limitation can be largely overcome by the use of a laser as a light source. This paper describes the design of an experimental IR spectrometer based on a CO(2) laser and an ATR technique. To demonstrate the applicability of this laser spectrometer in medical diagnosis, we compared quantitative measurements of D-glucose solutions obtained from the IR spectrometer with measurements made by a standard laboratory glucose analyzer.