On the Assisted Assessment of Anemia and Bilirubinemia Conditions

In this report, we review a number of procedures and devices that are used to diagnose and quantify the severity levels of two ubiquitous medical conditions, anemia and bilirubinemia (jaundice). Both conditions are associated with changes in the contents of specific chromophores present in the blood, more specifically hemoglobin present in the red blood cells (RBCs) and biliribin found in the plasma. In general terms, anemia results from a decrease in the hemoglobin content, while jaundice results from an increase in the bilirubin content. The lower the hemoglobin content, the more severe the anemia condition becomes [1]. Conversely, bilirubinemia becomes more severe with a higher bilirubin content [2]. While both intravenous and extravenous (transcutaneous) methods are being used to measure bilirubin, direct procedures based on the collection of blood samples are normally used to measure hemoglobin content. The remainder of this report is organized as follows. In Section 2, we examine issues related to the assessment of anemia, and in Section 3 issues related to jaundice. This report closes with a summary and an indication of directions for future research in this area.