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Intravital mid-infrared biosensing by normalized spatial probing of self-referenced optothermal signals

Berger, C. G.; Puttfarcken, B.; Qiu, J.; Hauer, I.; Herr, S.; Juestel, D.; Pleitez, M. A.

2026-05-28 endocrinology
10.64898/2026.05.27.26354202 medRxiv
Show abstract

We present a compact pump-and-probe mid-infrared Optothermal Spectrometer (OTHES) equipped with Spatial Probing and Autocorrection (SPAC) optimized for robust intravital application in humans. SPAC-OTHES facilitates alignment stability and spectral comparability across different measurement sessions involving different skin types. Contrary to state-of-the-art, SPAC-OTHES uses camera-based beam detection and an auto-calibration mechanism that enables ca. 73% better spectral reproducibility in intravital measurements in human volunteers than non-calibrated readouts. Moreover, SPAC-OTHES has the potential to lower the glucose quantification error, as demonstrated here in artificial skin phantoms, where an improvement of 52% compared to conventional diode-based detection was observed. The compactness of OTHES, combined with reliable SPAC-readout, has the potential to accelerate commercialization and broad application of biosensors based on mid-infrared spectroscopy.

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