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 measurements over a spatial domain of interest. In addition, we discuss the design and functionality of novel no-moving parts sensor heads. These front-end sensors include our miniaturized head (e.g., 1.8 mm 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 nonscanning coherent fiber-optic probe system (using a 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.