Diagnosis of diabetes mellitus using high frequency ultrasound and convolutional neural network

The incidence of diabetes mellitus has been increasing, prompting the search for non-invasive diagnostic methods. Although current methods exist, these have certain limitations, such as low reliability and accuracy, difficulty in individual patient adjustment, and discomfort during use. This paper presents a novel approach for diagnosing diabetes using high-frequency ultrasound (HFU) and a convolutional neural network (CNN). This method is based on the observation that glucose in red blood cells (RBCs) forms glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and accumulates on its surface. The study incubated RBCs with different glucose concentrations, collected acoustic reflection signals from them using a custom-designed 90-MHz transducer, and analyzed the signals using a CNN. The CNN was applied to the frequency spectra and spectrograms of the signal to identify correlations between changes in RBC properties owing to glucose concentration and signal features. The results confirmed the efficacy of the CNN-based approach with a classification accuracy of 0.98. This non-invasive diagnostic technology using HFU and CNN holds promise for in vivo diagnosis without the need for blood collection.