Evaluation of chip LED sensor module for fat thickness measurement using tissue phantoms.

We tested the feasibility of noninvasive fat thickness measurements by using a diffuse optical method with variable source-detector pairs. A light source module composed of 770 nm low-power chip LEDs and a photodetector were used in this study. The tissue phantoms are composed of a fat and a muscle layer made with gels with appropriate absorption/scattering coefficients. The fat thickness was varied from several to 30 mm. Based on this preliminary study, it is concluded that the noninvasive fat thickness measurement is possible with proper curve fitting procedure.