Given the rapid aging of the world’s population, improvements in technology for automation of patient care and documentation are badly needed. We have previously demonstrated a 'smart bed' that can non-intrusively monitor a patient in bed and determine a patient's respiration, heart rate and movement without intrusive or restrictive medical measurements. This is an application of spatially distributed integrating fiber optic sensors. The basic concept is that any patient movement that also moves an optical fiber within a specified area will produce a change in the optical signal. Two modal modulation approaches were considered, a statistical mode (STM) sensor and a high order mode excitation (HOME) sensor. The present design includes an STM sensor combined with a HOME sensor, using both modal modulation approaches. A special lens system allows only the high order modes of the optical fiber to be excited and coupled into the sensor. For handling output from the dual STM-HOME sensor, computer processing methods are discussed that offer comprehensive perturbation analysis for more reliable patient monitoring.

Date Published: 23 May 2005
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 5855, 17th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors, (23 May 2005); doi: 10.1117/12.623415

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 5855:
17th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors
Marc Voet; Reinhardt Willsch; Wolfgang Ecke; Julian Jones; Brian Culshaw, Editor(s)