| dc.description.abstract | Dehydration can have profound consequences for high performance populations such as athletes and military personnel, including cardiovascular strain, delirium, and reductions in performance. Current hydration monitoring methods include biofluid collection (e.g., blood, urine, saliva, etc) or monitoring of body weight throughout activity. Due to the limitations of these techniques, there is a need for a rapid non-invasive tool to monitor hydration. Toward this goal, a high wavenumber Raman spectroscopy (RS) method to detect systemic hydration has been developed. RS is an inelastic scattering technique that can provide information regarding the biochemical makeup of a sample and has potential to fill this gap in hydration monitoring due to its high sensitivity to water, rapid nature, and non-invasiveness. In this work, this method was validated in tissue-mimicking gelatin phantoms and followed by three in vivo studies with exercising volunteers. Two RS derived metrics, area under the curve (AUC) of the water band and the ratio of water features to CH features, show a trend in decreasing intensity after the prescribed exercise regimen. The degree of change was highly variable with significant sources of variability such as inter-subject variability, and a lack of gold standards to describe hydration status. Despite the high degree of variability, significant differences in spectral metrics can be identified following a prescribed exercise regimen. A high wavenumber RS-based approach for monitoring systemic hydration is advantageous for rapid and non-invasive hydration monitoring to reduce the incidence of negative consequences associated with inadequate hydration. | |
