Abstract
In this paper, we will present the development of a flexible fiber optic bend loss sensor for the measurement of plantar pressure and shear stress for diabetic patients. The sensor will allow the measurement of shear stress on the foot, which is a critical parameter in studying diabetic foot ulcers. The basic configuration of the optical sensor systems incorporates a mesh that is comprised of two sets of parallel optical waveguide planes; the planes are configured so the parallel rows of waveguides of the top and bottom planes are perpendicular to each other. The planes are sandwiched together creating one sensing sheet. Two-dimensional information is determined by measuring the loss of light from each of the waveguide to map the overall pressure distribution. The shifting of the layers relative to each other produces different patterns of the sensor output, and shear force information is characterized through repeated training of the sensor and analysis of the training data. The latest development and improvement in the sensors design is presented. Fabrication and sensor characterization results will be presented.
Highlights
Shear force is an important parameter to evaluate how ulcer is developed for diabetic patient
For the resistive and piezoelectric based shear sensors, these sensors suffer from the same problems as the capacitive sensors in lack of proper electronics support
To prevent electromagnetic interference caused by the surroundings and by the human body, Missinne [10], has reported an optical tactile sensors similar to the current capacitive sensors design, where shear and normal displacement is observed by the relative change in the displacement between the top and bottom sensing layer
Summary
Shear force is an important parameter to evaluate how ulcer is developed for diabetic patient. To improve the shear compliance and flexibility, all three reported methods used polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as mechanical support and substrate The advantages of these techniques are they are relatively easy to understand and implement. These sensors made of polymers are lack in a robust manufacturing process, as they are currently manually assembled, which makes them difficult to be mass-produced. One is that it can provide the same number of discrete pressure points compared to commercially available capacitive or resistive based pressure sensors while this optical sensor requires only 2 times the square root of the total number of sensors as the capacitive or resistive sensors.
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