Dear Colleagues,

The benefits of strict blood glucose control in people with diabetes mellitus are well known. At present, a large number of diabetics use blood glucose self-monitoring (SMBG) test strip devices for measuring their blood glucose levels, thus adjusting their insulin dose with the goal of achieving normoglycemia to avoid or delay the onset of serious health complications. Sensor technologies have been further developed for minimally invasive continuous monitoring, which have a dramatic impact on diabetes therapy, but the invasiveness and amount of consumables being wasted after use—which are certainly of great economic value for the fabricating industry—are significant issues that prevent placing these sensors into the category of green technology. 

By contrast, a wide range of optical techniques have been presented for the development of noninvasive methods for blood glucose sensing. There are suggestions for noninvasive measurements using body fluids that are easily accessible, such as tear fluid or saliva, but for such assays, tight correlation with blood glucose concentrations cannot be secured. We mainly expect contributions on direct measurements, e.g., exploiting optical characteristics that can be related to glucose as the analyte of interest. For this, different aspects on integral skin measurements have been presented in the past, but other technologies, such as confocal arrangements or photothermal detection using quantum cascade lasers, have also been applied for reaching more selective skin depths, or even approaches such as pulse glucometry, using modulations of the arterial vascular space, have been published. For testing and improving many different measurement scenarios, skin phantoms as models have also been prepared and described in the literature. Other important contributions of tremendous value are in the area of modelling the random walk of photons within complex scattering skin and related phantoms, e.g., via Monte Carlo simulations of radiation transport, given a certain optical arrangement.

This Special Issue, “Noninvasive Biosensors for Blood Glucose Monitoring”, aims to collect and publish recent advances within this interdisciplinary area. Research articles as well as reviews dealing with innovative measurement techniques, instrumentation development, and novel applications of all parts of spectroscopy are invited. Applications may refer to the analysis of biofluids or integral tissue characterization with a focus on glucose as a minor but physiological important constituent. Manuscripts on this plethora of instrumental developments and wide area applications contributing to the advancement of this field of biospectroscopy are welcome.

Prof. Dr. Herbert Michael Heise
Guest Editor

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