Patent 6947781 was granted and assigned to Massachusetts Institute of Technology on September, 2005 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method and an apparatus for distinguishing concentrations of blood constituents among distinct vascular components in situ. The method has steps of inducing periodic vibration, characterized by a frequency, in a limb of a person in such as manner as to selectively excite a resonant response in a specified blood vessel of the person, an artery or a vein, illuminating the limb of the person with a light source, and synchronously detecting a plethysmographic signal for discriminating response attributable to the specified blood vessel.