Improvement of sensitivity in continuous wave near infra-red spectroscopy systems by using silicon photomultipliers

Roberto Pagano; Sebania Libertino; Delfo Sanfilippo; Giorgio Fallica; Salvatore Lombardo

doi:10.1364/BOE.7.001183

Improvement of sensitivity in continuous wave near infra-red spectroscopy systems by using silicon photomultipliers

Biomed Opt Express. 2016 Mar 7;7(4):1183-92. doi: 10.1364/BOE.7.001183. eCollection 2016 Apr 1.

Authors

Roberto Pagano¹, Sebania Libertino¹, Delfo Sanfilippo², Giorgio Fallica², Salvatore Lombardo¹

Affiliations

¹ IMM, CNR, VIII Strada 5, Catania, 95121, Italy.
² IMS R&D, STMicroelectronics, Stradale Primosole 50, Catania, 95121, Italy.

Abstract

We experimentally analyze the signal-to-noise ratio of continuous wave (CW) near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) reflectance systems based on light emitting diodes and silicon photomultipliers for high performance low cost NIRS biomedical systems. We show that under suitable experimental conditions such systems exhibit a high SNR, which allows an SDS of 7 cm, to our knowledge the largest ever demonstrated in a CW-NIRs system.

Keywords: (040.6040) Silicon; (110.0113) Imaging through turbid media; (120.3890) Medical optics instrumentation; (230.5160) Photodetectors; (290.1350) Backscattering; (300.6340) Spectroscopy, infrared.