title: Optical measurement of nasal swellings.
abstract: We introduce a new optical method to noninvasively and continuously measure the swelling process of the nasal mucosa whereby we use light of different wavelengths in the red and near-infrared range which is transilluminated through the nasal tissue and whose extinction is recorded as a function of time. From the temporal and spectral extinction data, we are able to extract characteristic parameters that describe the swelling process quantitatively by means of a regression-type parameter estimation algorithm. The method has been applied to the nasal allergen provocation test and verified on a limited number of volunteers.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Technology, Dresden, Germany. U.Hampel@fz-rossendorf.de
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Hampel
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Schleicher
authors.forename: E G
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Wüstenberg
authors.forename: K B
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Hüttenbrink
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D004487:Edema / Q000175:diagnosis*; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009297:Nasal Mucosa / Q000473:pathology; D009299:Nasal Provocation Tests / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D009668:Nose Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis*; D055095:Optics and Photonics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013055:Spectrophotometry, Infrared / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D014159:Transducers