[5][6] Total Blood Volume has been measured manually by the use of carbon monoxide (CO) as a tracer for more than 100 years and was first proposed by French scientists Grehant and Quinquaud in 1882.
Soon after a usable set-up for human use was developed by Oxford scientists John Haldane and Lorrain Smith and presented in the Journal of Physiology in 1900.
The BVA-100, a product of Daxor Corporation, is an FDA-cleared diagnostic used at leading medical centers in the United States which consists of an automated well counter interfaced with a computer.
Blood volumes can also been measured in humans using the non-radioactive, carbon monoxide (CO) rebreathing technique.
[10] With this technique, a small volume of pure CO gas is inhaled and rebreathed for a few minutes.
During rebreathing, CO binds to hemoglobin present in red blood cells.