Patents,Monte Carlo and Phantoms

I have stumbled onto another remarkable resource- www.freepatentsonline.com/ -
There is a really cool patent for the detection of neonatal jaundice in there,particularly since it provides me with practical information on the construction of the tool.
It also has some formulae that address the minor variations in neonatal skin that occur due to gestational maturity(age after LMP of mother) and other factors such as varying skin thickness etc.
Right now,though,we're still developing the hardware and writing the Monte Carlo Models.
There is some good news,though.After meeting with a professor from the Indian Institute of Technology(Dr.Manivannan) and emailing some other experts in the area
we came to the conclusion that preparing optical phantoms may not be a very good idea at this stage.
Primarily this is because it would just take too long to import the components(Intralipid and other substitutes) at this stage.
So we are directly moving into testing the device on neonates since this seems more important than making the phantoms.The good news is that we have contacted a neonatal specialist who has said that we could test our device on 80-200 children in the ward at Isabel's hospital,over a period of two months.
We will get back to the phantoms once our testing is complete and we have a proper working instrument,by which time it could be used for fine tuning and calibration.
We have been continuously amazed by the people who we have asked for help-they have helped us in the form of their thorough research and practical advice,laboratory equipments that they have offered to let us use,and just words of encouragement.
With an attitude of gratitude,
=)