SUDOSCAN Device for the Early Detection of Diabetes: In Vitro Measurement versus Results of Clinical Tests

A medical device called "SUDOSCAN" for diagnosis of sudomotor dysfunctions and detection of diabetes in an early stage uses a set-up of couples of nickel anode and cathode placed on skin region with high density of sweat glands to assess the deviation in sweat ionic balance notably the deviation in chloride concentration. In this paper, it is shown that the electrochemical in vitro measurements on the behavior of nickel electrodes are close enough to those obtained through the clinical tests. The in vitro procedure consists in measuring the cathode potential after applying an incremental voltage at the anode; the resulting variation of the current is followed versus the potential of anode, cathode and their difference, respectively. This study brings further explanation on the origin of the onsets of currents and their evolution with chloride ion concentrations.