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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Project Background

Diabetes Mellitus is one of the common life threatening disease in the world.
Malaysia is ranked 10th in the world with the highest number of people having diabetes
(World Health Organization, (WHO), 2013). The number prevalence increases every
year because of the changes in the humans lifestyles.
The effects of diabetes can only be seen between six (6) to twelve (12) months
after having a continuous high level of glucose in blood. It can further lead to other
major health problems such as kidney failure, heart disease, blindness, stroke, and
neuropathy. There are many factors that can develop complications in diabetic patients.
For example, smoking can cause ones leg to be amputated due to blocked blood
vessels. Heart disease is contributed by the blockage of the arteries. It happens when
the patients have high blood pressure, are overweight and, have high blood fats.
Besides that, it can also lead to a stroke and retinopathy. Addition to
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that, excess of alcohol consumption can cause nerve damage and high blood
pressure, high blood fates and excess weight gain[1].
It is important to tightly monitor the glucose level in the blood to ensure it is
always within the normal range. There are many technologies available in the market
used in devices to monitor blood glucose. The cheapest method is finger prick which
needs the extraction of blood from the finger. The blood sample will be used to
measure the glucose content using a glucometer. The latest technology which is non-
invasive has been introduced as an alternative to reduce the painful during the blood
extraction and insulin injection. Continuous glucose monitoring system consists of a
glucose sensor and an automatic insulin pump. The system is very convenient, but it is
costly compared to the finger prick method.
Nowadays, many researcher have been conducted to prove that non-invasive
techniques are reliable in measuring glucose level. Various methods have been used
such as infrared, photoacoustic, ultrasound, and fluorescence to detect glucose in the
blood. Most of the results proved a good correlation between non-invasive and
invasive techniques[2].
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1.2 Problem Statement

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder that threatens human at every age. It occurs
not only among adults and elderly, but also among children and infants. The most
common and simple measurement techniques used are invasive or minimally invasive
techniques. These techniques have high accuracy measurement but are painful and has
a high risk of infections such as thrombosis. Non-invasive techniques has are
proposed as an alternative for pain free glucose measurements.

1.3 Objectives
The main objective of this project is to design a portable non-invasive blood
glucose monitoring device. The device should be able to detect glucose level in blood
using near infrared. In addition, it can determine the required insulin dose
corresponding to the body mass index (BMI) of a user and displaying the glucose level
and insulin dose required on the LCD screen.
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1.4 Scopes

The scope of the project is divided into two parts; the project hardware and
target users.

Project Hardware

The project is divided into two parts, hardware and software. The hardware part
includes the implementation of near infrared circuit for detection of glucose levels.
Besides that, it also includes the implementation of LCD keypad shield and
Arduino microcontroller. The software part consists of the coding of the Arduino
microcontroller using the integrated development environment (IDE).

Target User

The target user of the device is not only among the diabetic patients, but also non-
diabetic patients to help them maintain a normal blood glucose level for a healthy
life style.
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1.5 Thesis Organization

The thesis consists of five chapters:

Chapter 1 is the introduction of the project, which highlights on the background of the
problem statement, objectives, and scope of the projects.

Chapter 2 discusses the literature review that relates to previous research on the non-
invasive techniques used to monitor blood glucose levels. Current technologies are
also discussed in this chapter.

Chapter 3 focuses on the methodology of the project. It consists of the flowchart for
the process of the system and the block diagram. In this chapter, the description of the
device and the software used are discussed further.

The results and discussion are presented in chapter 4.

The last chapter, describes the conclusion and the recommendation for future
improvements of the project.
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