Claremont Center for the Mathematical Sciences

We have formulated a mathematical model for the trans-dermal excretion and measurement of alcohol as part of an ongoing effort to develop a functional integrated trans-dermal alcohol biosensor (TAS) and data analysis system. The TAS system, which measures the alcohol content in perspi- ration has the potential to non-invasively, unobtrusively and accurately determine blood alcohol concentration (BAC) over both short (minutes) and long (hours, days, weeks) periods in the clinic and in the field and to provide useful alcohol related physiological and behavioral information for researchers, clinicians and forensic applications. The problem of obtaining BAC from TAS mea- sured trans-dermal alcohol concentration (TAC) is fundamentally an ill-posed inverse problem. If one thinks of the dynamics of the trans-dermal transport process as a black box with input BAC and output TAC, the problem of determining BAC from the TAC signal becomes one of inverting the transformation represented by the black box. Developing clinical software that will accurately and efficiently carry out this inversion is fundamentally a mathematical problem. In this talk we discuss how this problem can be modeled and analyzed.