Patent ID: 8140147

Claim:
A method of determining a state of health, other than cancer, of an individual, where “state of health” is any of (i) a disease state based on long-term changes (greater than one month duration) in tissue, (ii) a measure of chemical change based on long-term (greater than one month duration) glycemic control, (iii) a measure of glycation end-products in tissue, and (iv) a combination of the above, comprising: (a) using a flexible probe, illuminating a portion of a tissue of the individual with excitation light; (b) using the flexible probe, determining a tissue reflectance characteristic of the tissue, detecting light emitted from the tissue by fluorescence of a chemical within the tissue, where the tissue is not the lens of the eye, and determining a corrected fluorescence measurement from the detected light and the tissue reflectance characteristic; (c) determining the state of health from the corrected fluorescence measurement and a model relating fluorescence and a state of health.