| Abstract | The infrared spectrum of a mixture serves as the basis to quantitate its constituents, and a number of common clinical chemistry tests have proven to be feasible using this approach. This article reviews the infrared spectroscopy-based analytical methods that have been developed for consideration as clinical assays, including serum analysis, urine analysis, amniotic fluid assays for the estimation of fetal lung maturity, and others. Because of the widespread interest in the potential for in vivo measurement of blood glucose using near-infrared spectroscopy, a separate section is devoted to the analysis of glucose in whole blood. A related technique uses the infrared spectrum of biomedical specimens directly as a diagnostic tool. For example, the spectra of serum and of synovial fluid have proven to be useful in the diagnosis of metabolic disorders and arthritis, respectively, without explicitly recovering their chemical composition from the spectra. Rather, characteristic spectral features and patterns have been identified as the basis to distinguish spectra corresponding to healthy patients from those corresponding to diseased patients. These applications are reviewed here. Issues such as ease of use, speed, reliability, sample size, and calibration stability all play important roles in governing the practical acceptability of infrared spectroscopy-based analytical methods. To provide a framework to illustrate these issues, descriptions are included for the various procedures that have been explored to wed successfully infrared spectroscopy to clinical chemistry. |
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