Thermal ablation of tumors aims to apply extreme temperatures inside the target tissue to achieve substantial tumor destruction in a minimally invasive manner. Several techniques are comprised, classified according to the type of energy source. However, the lack of treatment selectivity still needs to be addressed, potentially causing two risks: i) incomplete tumor destruction and recurrence, or conversely, ii) damage of the surrounding healthy tissue. Therefore, the research herein reviewed seeks to develop sensing systems based on fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) for thermal monitoring inside the lesion during radiofrequency, laser, and microwave ablation. This review shows that, mainly thanks to multiplexing and minimal invasiveness, FBGs provide an optimal sensing solution. Their temperature measurements are the feedback to control the ablation process and allow to investigate different treatments, compare their outcomes, and quantify the impact of factors such as proximity to thermal probe and blood vessels, perfusion, and tissue type.

Force sensing is a key enabler for getting haptic feedback, useful in a variety of applications, especially in the fields of robotics, automation, and health. Indeed, equipping machines, vehicles, robots, and even humans with force sensors provides controlled processes and production, safe and enhanced external interaction, and capability to perform efficient manipulation and precise movements. Aiming to develop an alternative solution to electrical force sensors, in this work a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is embedded inside a patch made of silicone rubber. Such embedding strategy allows to make the FBG sensitive to the force variations, obtain a flexible patch having a moldable shape, and protect the most fragile areas of the optical fiber. Moreover, thanks to its high flexibility and stretchability, the sensing patch can be easily employed as portable and wearable device. Besides reporting fabrication process and results of the performed force tests, this work provides a systematic study of the FBG embedding in silicone matrix. Indeed, for this purpose, three sensing patches having different thickness are developed and tested in temperature, strain, and force, finding that the patch thickness influences the sensing performances of the device. The resulting force sensitivity varies in the range from 9.2 pm/N to 19.0 pm/N, based on the sensor thickness. Temperature sensitivity, instead, is comparable with respect to bare FBGs, while strain sensitivity is enormously reduced, obtaining a patch able to insulate the FBG from the strain variations.

The current challenge in the field of thermo-ablative treatments of tumors is to achieve a balance between complete destruction of malignant cells and safeguarding of the surrounding healthy tissue. Blood perfusion plays a key role for thermal ablation success, especially in the case of highly vascularized organs like liver. This work aims at monitoring the temperature within perfused swine liver undergoing laser ablation (LA). Temperature was measured through seven arrays of Fiber Bragg Grating sensors (FBGs) around the laser applicator. To mimic reality, blood perfusion within the ex-vivo liver was simulated using artificial vessels. The influence of blood perfusion on LA was carried out by comparing the temperature profiles in two different spatial configurations of vessels and fibers. The proposed setup permitted to accurately measure the heat propagation in real-time with a temperature resolution of 0.1 °C and to observe a relevant tissue cooling near to the vessel up to 65%.

Bones are a frequent site of metastases that cause intolerable cancer-related pain in 90% of patients, making their quality of life poor. In this scenario, being able to treat bone oncology patients by means of minimally invasive techniques can be crucial to avoid surgery-related risks and decrease hospitalization times. The use of microwave ablation (MWA) is gaining broad clinical acceptance to treat bone tumors. It is worth investigating temperature variations in bone tissue undergoing MWA because the clinical outcomes can be inferred from this parameter. Several feasibility studies have been performed, but an experimental analysis of the temperature trends reached into the bone during the MWA has not yet been assessed. In this work, a multi-point temperature study along the bone structure during such treatment is presented. The study has been carried out on ex vivo bovine femur and tibia, subjected to MWA. An overall of 40 measurement points covering a large sensing area was obtained for each configuration. Temperature monitoring was performed by using 40 fiber Bragg grating (FBGs) sensors (four arrays each housing 10 FBGs), inserted into the bones at specific distances to the microwave antenna. As result, the ability of this experimental multi-point monitoring approach in tracking temperature variations within bone tissue during MWA treatments was shown. This study lays the foundations for the design of a novel approach to study the effects of MWA on bone tumors. As consequence, the MWA treatment settings could be optimized in order to maximize the treatment effects of such a promising clinical application, but also customized for the specific tumor and patient.

Temperature monitoring inside tissue undergoing minimally invasive thermal ablation is a primary goal to improve the clinical outcomes. Existing techniques for temperature measurements, classified as invasive or contactless, have limited clinical practice applications due to several practical issues. Fiber Bragg grating sensors (FBG) can be a valid solution since they can perform accurate and multi-point temperature measurements by inserting a single and small fiber optic within the tissue. Notwithstanding, their cross-sensitivity to strain may cause measurement errors during thermal procedures. Indeed, several organs (e.g., lungs, liver, pancreas) can strain gratings due to movements caused by breathing. To date, only a few studies have specifically addressed this concern, despite the wide use of FBGs in this field. To overcome this lack, we estimated the artefact of the FBGs output in response to lungs’ movements induced by breathing. This investigation was carried out by inserting FBGs within a manually ventilated lung model (ex vivo swine lungs). We measured both the lungs’ movements during breathing by a Motion Capture system and the related fluctuations of the FBGs’ output. Moreover, we performed the same experiments during thermal ablation of lungs to assess the mentioned artefact’s influence. In this study, we demonstrated the relevance of the respiratory artefact on FBGs, and also the possibility to correct this error during thermal ablation.

In this work, the advantages of 3D printing technology are combined with fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors to implement an innovative 3D shape sensor embedded in a 3D printed patch. The system allows to obtain a sensing patch able to provide a direct measure of curvature and neutral axis position in the 3D space in a simple manner and without requiring numerical simulations or mathematical models of the structure of interest. The experimental tests assess the proposed novel approach showing an optimal agreement between the measurements of the proposed patch with respect to the reference sensors. Furthermore, both the curvature sensitivity and resolution can be modulated by changing the distances among the FBGs inside the patch, tailoring the performances and the dimensions with the application requirements.