High-Speed Wavelength-Multiplexed Fiber-Optic Sensors for Biomedicine

In this paper, we introduce three novel fiber-optic sensor system designs to attain real time sample data such as blood flow rates via Doppler and reflectance over a spatial domain of interest. In addition, we will discuss the design and functionality of novel no-moving parts sensor heads. These front-end sensors include our miniaturized head (e.g., 1.8mm cross-sectional diameter) for intra-cavity probing and a hand-held optical scanning head for external cavity sensing via Doppler and reflectance measurements. The non-coherent miniaturized fiber-optic scanning probe can also function as real time precision optical knife to remove fat in blood vessels or to make intra-cavity incisions with pinpoint accuracy. On the other hand, our non-scanning coherent fiber-optic probe system (using broadband source) has the unique capability of producing multiple reconfigurable simultaneous beams and operating in slow and fast acquisition mode at the same time. System issues such as front-end probe beam angular scan, scan distance, and system insertion loss are addressed.