Fiber bragg grating sensor-based optical guidance system for epidural catheter

Epidural anesthesia is a clinical practice described as an injection of anesthetic into an epidural space using a special catheter. It is a very popular treatment for pain relief, but due to the blindness of the procedure existing techniques frequently fail in identifying the epidural space. One of the proposed solutions is to use Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors to measure the strain experienced by the needle during injection. Since different tissues have different properties, the strain acting on the needle will vary when it passes from one tissue to another. an array of five FBG sensors, mounted on the external side of the catheter, records the local strain and discriminates forces and bending on the catheter, serving as a guidance method. Experiments have been performed on a phantom.