Patent ID: 8581697

Claim:
An apparatus for the non-invasive in vivo determination of the concentration of alcohol, a substance of abuse, or both, in human tissue of an individual by Raman spectroscopy, comprising: (a) an illumination subsystem for generating excitation light, (b) a sampling subsystem for delivering the excitation light to a portion of the in vivo tissue and detecting light from the in vivo tissue, wherein the sampling subsystem comprises: (b1) an optical input to receive the excitation light from the illumination subsystem, (b2) a sampling surface that forms a tissue interface to illuminate the tissue with the excitation light delivered from the optical input, and (b3) an optical output to collect the emitted light from the tissue and output the collected light to the spectrometer subsystem, wherein at least one of the optical input and the optical output comprises one or more optical fibers, wherein the optical input and the optical output comprise the same optical fibers; (c) a spectrometer subsystem for determining a Raman spectrum from the detected light (d) a computing subsystem for correcting the measured Raman spectrum, and (e) a calibration subsystem for determining the relationship between the corrected Raman spectrum and the concentration of alcohol, a substance of abuse, or both.