All optical indentation probe for endoscopic diagnosis of osteoarthritis

摘要

A novel kind of miniaturized, all optical probe concept to measure the elasticity of biological tissues is here presented. The probe is based on fibre Bragg grating sensors (FBG) inscribed in optical fibres. The measurement procedure exploits the high strain sensitivity of Bragg gratings. A study on the reproducibility, reliability, and resolution of the sensor is presented and a first measurement on bovine cartilage tissue is reported. A linear elastic model of the cartilage has been used to analyse the data. The results indicate a good agreement with previous values given in the literature for micro-indentation.