A thin cylindrical structure, the core, surrounded by another concentric layer, the cladding, which is used to guide light.
Published in Chapter:
Optical Fiber Technology for eHealthcare
Nélia Jordão Alberto (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal), Lúcia Maria Botas Bilro (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal), Paulo Fernando da Costa Antunes (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal & Departamento de Física da Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal), Cátia Sofia Jorge Leitão (University de Aveiro, Portugal), Hugo Filipe Teixeira Lima (University de Aveiro, Portugal), Paulo Sérgio de Brito André (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal & Departamento de Física da Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal), Rogério Nunes Nogueira (Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal), and João de Lemos Pinto (University de Aveiro, Portugal)
Copyright: © 2013
|Pages: 21
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-3990-4.ch009
Abstract
In the last years, optical fiber based sensors and systems for ehealthcare attracted the attention of the scientific community. Over this chapter, optical fiber technology is presented, referring the different types of optical fibers, its main characteristics, and advantages over other sensing methodologies. In addition, optical fiber based sensors and sensing techniques are discussed and several works reported in the literature are reviewed showing that they are a valuable technique to improve healthcare service to the community and as a potential solution to answer different problems. The final section of the chapter consists of the description of three applications of optical sensors in healthcare, namely monitoring of human joint movement, measuring strain of biological tissues, and characterization of medical materials.