Abstract
Jaundice is a commonly occurring incident at birth and the first few days to weeks of the life a neonate. It does not pose a serious health risk and requires minimal medical intervention. However, hyperbilirubinemia can result in long term neurodevelopmental health issues. The most reliable method of monitoring serum bilirubin is to draw a blood sample by a heel puncture. However, this method is painful and increases the risk of infection in hospital settings. Several noninvasive transcutaneous methods are developed. However, skin tone variations or the use of phototherapy exhibited undesired interference with the results. In addition, in the third world countries, medical care is not readily available after the discharge of a neonate from the hospital. Therefore, this thesis work aimed to investigate the functionality of an inexpensive noninvasive method for detection of hyperbilirubinemia. The pulsatile tissue simulator developed in this project to perform preliminary studies on the functionality of the novel method of identifying hyperbilirubinemia noninvasively showed promising results. The simulator was able to represent normal and elevated levels of bilirubin.