Abstract
Hemoglobin concentration is an indicator for assessing blood product quality. To measure hemoglobin concentration in blood products without damaging blood bags, we proposed a method based on visible-near infrared transmission spectroscopy. Complex optical properties of blood bag walls result in measurement irregularities. Analyses showed that the slope of the light intensity-pathlength curve was more robust to the influence of the blood bag wall. In this study, the transmission spectra of red blood cell suspensions at multiple optical pathlengths were obtained, and the slopes of logarithmic light intensity-pathlength curves were calculated through curve fitting. A nondestructive measurement of hemoglobin content was achieved by using a regression model correlating slope spectra and hemoglobin concentration. Sixty samples with hemoglobin concentrations ranging from 72 to 161 g/L were prepared. Among them, 40 samples were used as a calibration set, and the remaining 20 samples were used as a prediction set. The determination coefficient of the prediction set was 0.97, with a mean square error of 2.78 g/L. This result demonstrates that a non-destructive measurement of hemoglobin levels in blood bags can be achieved by multiple-pathlength transmission spectroscopy.