Unit of Measurements and Biomedical Instrumentation, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Via Alvaro del Portillo, 00128 Rome, Italy.
Unit of Anesthesia, Intensive Care and Pain Management, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Via Alvaro del Portillo, 00128 Rome, Italy.
Biosensors (Basel). 2022 Aug 16;12(8):645. doi: 10.3390/bios12080645.
Fiber Bragg grating sensors (FBGs) are considered a valid sensing solution for a variety of medical applications. The last decade witnessed the exploitation of these sensors in applications ranging from minimally invasive surgery to biomechanics and monitoring physiological parameters. Recently, preliminary studies investigated the potential impact of FBGs in the management of epidural procedures by detecting when the needle reaches the epidural space with the loss of resistance (LOR) technique. In this article, we propose a soft and flexible FBG-based system capable of detecting the LOR, we optimized the solution by considering different designs and materials, and we assessed the feasibility of the optimized soft sensor (SS) in clinical settings. The proposed SS addresses some of the open challenges in the use of a sensing solution during epidural punctures: it has high sensitivity, it is non-invasive, the sensing element does not need to be inserted within the needle, and the clinician can follow the standard clinical practice. Our analysis highlights how the material and the design impact the system response, and thus its performance in this scenario. We also demonstrated the system's feasibility of detecting the LOR during epidural procedures.
光纤布拉格光栅传感器（FBG）被认为是一种有效的传感解决方案，可用于各种医疗应用。在过去的十年中，这些传感器已被应用于从微创手术到生物力学和监测生理参数等各种领域。最近，初步研究调查了 FBG 在通过检测当针到达硬膜外空间时阻力损失（LOR）技术时对硬膜外程序管理的潜在影响。在本文中，我们提出了一种基于柔软灵活的 FBG 的系统，能够检测 LOR，我们通过考虑不同的设计和材料来优化该解决方案，并评估了优化后的软传感器（SS）在临床环境中的可行性。所提出的 SS 解决了在硬膜外穿刺过程中使用传感解决方案的一些开放性挑战：它具有高灵敏度，非侵入性，感测元件不需要插入针内，并且临床医生可以遵循标准的临床实践。我们的分析强调了材料和设计如何影响系统响应，从而影响其在这种情况下的性能。我们还证明了该系统在硬膜外手术中检测 LOR 的可行性。
