Abstract
Advances in medicine and improvements in life quality has led to an increase in the life expectancy of the general population. An ageing world population have placed demands on the use of assistive technology and, in particular, towards novel healthcare devices and sensors. Besides the electromagnetic field immunity, polymer optical fiber (POF) sensors have additional advantages due to their material features such as high flexibility, lower Young’s modulus (enabling high sensitivity for mechanical parameters), higher elastic limits, and impact resistance. Such advantages are well-aligned with the instrumentation requirements of many healthcare devices and in movement analysis. Aiming at these advantages, this review paper presents the state-of-the-art developments of POF sensors for healthcare applications. A plethora of healthcare applications are discussed, which include movement analysis, physiological parameters monitoring, instrumented insoles, as well as instrumentation of healthcare robotic devices such as exoskeletons, smart walkers, actuators, prostheses, and orthosis. This review paper shows the feasibility of using POF sensors in healthcare applications and, due to the aforementioned advantages, it is possible to envisage a further widespread use of such sensors in this research field in the next few years.
Highlights
As an emerging sensor technology, optical fiber sensors present the intrinsic advantages of lightweight, compactness, chemical stability, immunity to electromagnetic field, and multiplexing capabilities [1]
These platforms generally have a matrix of pressure sensing elements arranged in a rigid and flat platform [59]. Even though they provide measurements of the foot plantar pressure and 3D dynamics, they lack in portability, restricting the tests to laboratory or clinical environments, where there is a limitation on the number of steps per trial. This drawback inhibits the application on wearable robotics, remote and home health monitoring, which is a trend in healthcare applications with the advances in wireless sensor and communication technologies [75]
Instrumented insoles became a feasible option to the force platforms with the possibility of being used inside a shoe, thereby resulting in a portable device to be assessed outside the laboratory environment, for remote health monitoring and wearable robotics applications [59]
Summary
As an emerging sensor technology, optical fiber sensors present the intrinsic advantages of lightweight, compactness, chemical stability, immunity to electromagnetic field, and multiplexing capabilities [1]. Optical fiber sensors are embedded in 3D-printed structures for structural health monitoring (SHM) [43] and plantar pressure sensing platforms [44] These advantages of POFs in conjunction with developments on POFs materials processing, fiber connectorization and sensors production have pushed the POF sensor technology towards many commercial applications in different fields, as summarized in reference [45], where the developments related to FBGs in POFs and their many applications were summarized and discussed in detail. This new scenario in POF sensors has enabled the development of many healthcare devices using POFs as the sensing element with the potential for commercialization and further widespread use.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
