# BGscope: a non-invasive, continuous, and accurate O2 AND CO2 sensing

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO · 2021 · $159,900

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT:
Blood gases are the primary indicators of effectiveness of ventilation, circulation and perfusion
in neonates. Every year ~ 4 million babies are born in the United States. Of these, 15% (~500,000) suffer
from respiratory distress mainly due to prematurity and/or low birth weight. These babies are transferred
to the neonatology intensive care unit (NICU) immediately after birth, for whom approximately 10 million
blood gas tests are performed annually. The gold standard of measuring blood gases are invasive
procedures where blood is drawn through arterial lines connected to the umbilical cord, through needle
pokes of the heel (known as heel stick) for capillary blood or through a venous line. While arterial sampling
provides the highest accuracy, it is not easy to perform and poses a high risk of infection; capillary
sampling is the most frequently performed procedure, with the consequences of being painful and a high
chance of sample clotting; venous sampling is very easy to perform with the least accuracy among all
the previous methods. Therefore, non-invasive, continuous monitoring devices are essential to avoid the
adverse effects of the blood gas test. Oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2), are the most important
respiratory gases, and their partial pressures (PO2 and PCO2) and oxygen saturation (SO2) collectively
reflect the overall adequacy of respiratory function. Conventional O2 sensors (popularly known as pulse
oximeters) are based on optical spectrophotometry technology and are relatively large to be placed on
the limb of the premature/ preterm neonate and consequently lose signal integrity. CO2 sensors (popularly
known as transcutaneous CO2) detect the dissolved CO2 gas in blood through skin by depositing heat
onto a localized capillary bed. In both cases, the blood gas measurement is at the capillary level and is
unable to provide the accuracy of the gold standard. In addition, these sensors are capable of only
measuring one of two blood gases. Moreover, continuous operation of these sensors generates heat and
may damage the sensitive skin of neonates. Therefore, frequent repositioning of the sensor is required,
and further blood draws are necessary for the sensor recalibration. Our product non-invasively measures
arterial blood gas; partial pressures of O2 and CO2 (PO2 and PCO2) and SO2. It is a simple wristband that
can be used at the wrist or ankle. It does not generate heat or damage sensitive tissue. It continuously
measures arterial blood gases (O2 and CO2) with high accuracy. Our proposed device will help
reducing the blood draws from NICU babies by ~75%. We have named it BGScope for Blood Gas
Scope. BGScope works based on the principles of multispectral photoacoustic imaging. Our short-term
goals are: (i) to develop the BGScope device and a computational kernel to non-invasively measure
arterial blood gases including, partial pressures of O2 and CO2 and oxygen saturation (SO2); and (ii) to
conduct a pil...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10449725
- **Project number:** 3R01EB027769-02S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Kamran Avanaki
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $159,900
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2021-09-17 → 2023-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10449725

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10449725, BGscope: a non-invasive, continuous, and accurate O2 AND CO2 sensing (3R01EB027769-02S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10449725. Licensed CC0.

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