Fiber grating sensors in medicine: Current and emerging applications

Fiber grating sensors hold immense potential for biomedical applications due to their inherent properties like small size, biocompatibility, non-toxicity, chemical inertness and electromagnetically inert nature. Grating based sensors are well known technology for structural health monitoring (SHM) in the arena of civil and aerospace; however investigations for their use in the field of medicine are fairly recent and they have not been yet commercialized for the same. As these sensors detect strain, temperature, pressure, vibration, curvature and refractive index of the surrounding material even in high magnetic and electric field environments, they can serve diagnostic purposes in diverse areas of healthcare e.g. biomechanics, cardiology, gynecology, very low temperature monitoring and immunosensing to name a few. Most importantly, they can be used efficiently for thermal and pressure mapping even during MRI procedure where conventional sensors may fail. The paper is a review of various application areas of fiber grating based devices, the status of precedent and ongoing research around the world, and discussion on the issues hampering their rapid growth in the field. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.