Application Of Optical Fiber Fabrics In Medical Field

Optical fiber (optical fiber) has been widely known as an optical waveguide tool. In addition to what is widely known in the field of communication, what are the applications of optical fiber in the medical field?

According to the different manufacturing materials, optical fibers are usually divided into two categories: inorganic optical fiber and organic optical fiber. Inorganic optical fibers include glass fiber and quartz fiber, which are usually used in communication, architecture, aerospace and other fields. Organic optical fiber mainly refers to polymer optical fibers made of highly transparent organic polymer materials (also known as "plastic optical fibers" or "POF"). Its softer texture gives it a wider application area than inorganic fibers.

Optical fiber fabric is a composite fabric product formed by the combination of optical fiber and textile fabric. It belongs to intelligent textile (SmartTextiles). Optical fiber fabrics generally use polymer optical fibers, so they have both softness and optical conductivity of textiles. The application of optical fiber fabrics covers many fields, such as communication, lighting, decoration, entertainment, medical treatment and so on, and its application in the medical field is becoming an important development direction. According to the different functions of optical fiber, the optical fiber fabrics used in medical field can be subdivided into 3 categories: signal transmission optical fiber fabric, surface light-emitting optical fiber fabric and optical fiber sensing fabric.

One

Signal transmission optical fiber fabric

Optical fiber fabrics can be used as a part of wearable intelligent devices and assume the function of physical connection and signal transmission between functional devices. In 1996, JAYARAMAN and other pioneered research on smart clothing. They use optical fiber as the signal transmission bus (bus) of intelligent clothing (SmartShirt), and connect the electronic devices and electronic wires embedded into the fabric to form the "wearable motherboard (WearableMotherboard)". For the first time, the monitoring of human physiological signals in the non interference environment has been realized for the first time, creating a new field of "wearable electronics".

Two

Luminescent fiber fabric

Optical fiber luminescent fabric is a kind of optical fiber textile which uses the optical transmission property of optical fiber to release the light signal of the light source and form the luminous effect. It can be applied in the fields of lighting, decoration, medical treatment and so on. Medical fiber optic light-emitting fabric is mainly used as a device for photodynamic therapy. By modulating the light source signals of different wavelengths, the desired therapeutic wave can be obtained, and the luminous surface with different areas and different light intensity can be obtained through proper optical fiber arrangement or lens device, so as to meet the treatment requirements of various diseases, such as the blue light irradiation therapy for neonatal jaundice, the illumination therapy for promoting wound healing and the treatment of keratosis.

Three

Sensing optical fiber fabric

Optical fiber sensing fabric is another application of optical fiber fabrics. Fiber is usually used as a sensor, and the role of textile material is added to the fabric to form part of the fabric. There are 3 kinds of optical fiber sensors commonly used for making sensing fabrics, such as grating sensor, macro bend sensor and micro bend sensor.

(1) FiberBraggGrating (FBG) is a typical representative of grating sensors. Since 1970s, it has been used as an optical fiber device to detect signals such as temperature, humidity, displacement, acceleration and so on. It has been used in aerospace, military defense, biological medicine and other fields. Prague, China.

Optical fiber wearable system

(2) the bending radius of optical fiber is much larger than that of fiber diameter, which is called macro bending, and the additional loss caused by it is Macrobending loss. The loss will change with external interference (temperature, pressure, refractive index, etc.). The device using this principle to detect external interference information is called optical fiber macro bending sensor. At present, fiber optic macro bending sensing fabrics are mostly used in the monitoring of human respiratory characteristics in the medical field.

(3) optical fiber micro bending loss refers to the additional loss caused by the minimal bending (slight bending) of the optical axis. Similar to macro bending, optical fiber micro bend sensor can also be developed by using the principle of micro bend loss of optical fiber. At present, optical fiber micro bending sensing fabrics are also applied in medical field.