Abstract
The growing interest in the development of smart textiles for medical applications is driven by the aim to increase the mobility of patients who need a continuous monitoring of such physiological parameters. At the same time, the use of fiber optic sensors (FOSs) is gaining large acceptance as an alternative to traditional electrical and mechanical sensors for the monitoring of thermal and mechanical parameters. The potential impact of FOSs is related to their good metrological properties, their small size and their flexibility, as well as to their immunity from electromagnetic field. Their main advantage is the possibility to use textile based on fiber optic in a magnetic resonance imaging environment, where standard electronic sensors cannot be employed. This last feature makes FOSs suitable for monitoring biological parameters (e.g., respiratory and heartbeat monitoring) during magnetic resonance procedures. Research interest in combining FOSs and textiles into a single structure to develop wearable sensors is rapidly growing. In this review we provide an overview of the state-of-the-art of textiles, which use FOSs for monitoring of mechanical parameters of physiological interest. In particular we briefly describe the working principle of FOSs employed in this field and their relevant advantages and disadvantages. Also reviewed are their applications for the monitoring of mechanical parameters of physiological interest.
Highlights
The growing interest in smart textiles for medical applications is driven by the aim to increase the mobility of patients who need a continuous monitoring of physiological parameters [1,2,3,4]
We aim at describing the use of smart textiles in medicine employing fiber optic-based sensors (FOSs); in particular we focus on their use for monitoring physiological parameters by measuring mechanical variables and on the metrological properties and performances of the devices reported in literature
Macrobending FOSs find applications in medicine mainly in the monitoring of respiratory movements [44,45,46]. These sensors are largely used in smart textiles, their medical applications will be described in more detail
Summary
The growing interest in smart textiles for medical applications is driven by the aim to increase the mobility of patients who need a continuous monitoring of physiological parameters [1,2,3,4]. During the last decades the use of fiber optic-based sensors (FOSs) has been gaining acceptance in a large number of applications in the fields of civil engineering, the automotive industry and medicine [8,9,10], among others These sensors allow the measurement of physical and chemical parameters employing a large number of working principles and configurations [4]. FOSs have good metrological properties (i.e., low zero drift and sensitivity drift, good accuracy and good sensitivity and large bandwidth), they offer the possibility to implement distributed sensors and they are immune to electromagnetic interferences These features make FOSs an emerging solution for the monitoring of physiological parameters and more generally for applications in medicine [9].
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