Significance: Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are increasingly utilized as a way to provide healthcare to the over 10% of Americans that have diabetes. Fully insertable and optically transduced biosensors are poised to further improve CGMs by extending the device lifetime and reducing cost. However, optical modeling of light propagation in tissue is necessary to ascertain device performance.

Aim: Monte Carlo modeling of photon transport through tissue was used to assess the luminescent output of a fully insertable glucose biosensor that uses a multimodal Förster resonance energy transfer competitive binding assay and a phosphorescence lifetime decay enzymatic assay.

Approach: A Monte Carlo simulation framework of biosensor luminescence and tissue autofluorescence was built using MCmatlab. Simulations were first validated against previous research and then applied to predict the response of a biosensor in development.

Results: Our results suggest that a diode within the safety standards for light illumination on the skin, with far-red excitation, allows the luminescent biosensor to yield emission strong enough to be detectable by a common photodiode.

Conclusions: The computational model showed that the expected fluorescent power output of a near-infrared light actuated barcode was five orders of magnitude greater than a visible spectrum excited counterpart biosensor.