Epidemiological studies have shown that reduction of blood cholesterol levels decreases the risk of atherosclerosis, ischemia, and myocardial infarction. This target level is below the national average serum cholesterol concentration. With many Americans at risk for cardiovascular disease, widespread screening of the population could be instrumental in lowering escalating health care costs in the United States. The tests currently available for cholesterol, however, have several disadvantages. The tests are invasive and cause discomfort to the patient, which usually decreases willingness to submit to regular cholesterol screening.
Many tests are also expensive, and some tests for mass screening have been shown to be inaccurate.
The development of an accurate noninvasive assay for cholesterol in all its forms would be of great benefit in preventive medicine. Near-IR spectroscopy also has been used successfully to determine cholesterol in serum samples acquired from human subjects. Variations in ion concentration constitutes a major source of error in the near-IR determination of cholesterol. If the levels of all background constituents were known, a far more accurate near-IR determination of cholesterol could be made. It is possible to determine sodium, protein, triglycerides, albumin, and glucose through invasive and time consuming procedures, but the goal is a rapid noninvasive analysis.