Muscle Tissue Oxygenation Monitoring (MTOM) System

Adequate resuscitation of patients from shock states depends on rapid diagnosis of oxygen insufficiency and restoration of oxygen delivery to tissues. To address the Army’s need for a method to evaluate the state of oxygen transport at the end-organ level in the trauma patient, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new, noninvasive, multiwavelength NIRS-based device for Muscle Tissue Oxygenation Monitoring (MTOM). The MTOM system will utilize a frequency domain photon migration method to quantitatively determine absolute tissue absorption and scattering parameters at four different wavelengths. The concentrations of hemoglobin, deoxyhemoglobin, and cytochrome oxidase in the tissue are then determined from the absorption coefficients. Total hemoglobin and oxygen saturation in tissue (StO^2) are then calculated to allow evaluation of the patient’s state of oxygen transport by medical personnel. This novel system design is ruggedized, field-deployable, and requires minimal training in order to operate; thus, making MTOM compatible with combat critical care applications. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate the feasibility of MTOM by testing the system with tissue phantoms. In Phase II, POC plans to develop an optimized MTOM prototype and demonstrate its performance in an animal model.