In the last decades, fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) have become increasingly attractive to medical applications due to their unique properties such as small size, biocompatibility, immunity to electromagnetic interferences, high sensitivity and multiplexing capability. FBGs have been employed in the development of surgical tools, assistive devices, wearables, and biosensors, showing great potentialities for medical uses. This paper reviews the FBG-based measuring systems, their principle of work, and their applications in medicine and healthcare. Particular attention is given to sensing solutions for biomechanics, minimally invasive surgery, physiological monitoring, and medical biosensing. Strengths, weaknesses, open challenges, and future trends are also discussed to highlight how FBGs can meet the demands of nextgeneration medical devices and healthcare system.

Multicore optical fibers are especially attractive for the fabrication of curvature and shape sensors due to the spatial distribution of the different cores. Fiber Bragg gratings have been used in the past for the implementation of these sensors, however, despite their inherent properties, they have a very limited sensitivity. In this paper, we study the use of long period gratings (LPGs) for the implementation of a directional curvature sensor. We inscribed a set of three different LPGs in a seven core optical fiber using a selective inscription technique. We inscribed a single LPG in the external cores and an array of three LPGs in the central core. We have characterized the proposed sensor for strain, torsion, and curvature magnitude and direction. The proposed sensor shows a linear response for curvature magnitudes from 0 to 1.77 m ^-1 with a maximum curvature sensitivity of -4.85 nm/m ^-1 and shows a near sinusoidal behavior in all the cores with curvature directions from 0° to 360°. The sensor shows a good insensitivity to strain. The torsion in the multicore optical fibers can be detected and measured using the maximum attenuation of the LPGs in the external cores.

We report on temperature sensors based on regenerated fiber Bragg gratings (RFBGs) for measurements up to 1100. The annealing process required to regenerate such gratings makes the optical fiber too delicate, thus making an adequate packaging necessary. Prior to the grating regeneration the optical fiber is protected with a ceramic tube which in turn is shielded with a thick metal casing. We have performed a thorough characterization of the thermo-optical response of both packaged and unpackaged RFBG sensors placing especial attention on possible residual hysteresis after several temperature cycling tests. The response and recovery times of packaged sensors were found to be, respectively, ~9 s and ~ 22 s.

We have implemented a multipoint two-dimensional curvature optical fiber sensor based on a nontwisted homogeneous four-core fiber. A theoretical approach to model the mechanical behavior of these fibers under curvature conditions has been developed. Two shape sensors composed of an array of FBGs inscribed in the four-core fiber have been implemented to corroborate the theoretical analysis with the experimental results. The characterization of the proposed shape sensors showed their ability to measure the curvature radius, the curvature direction, and any external applied force related to both uniform and nonuniform curvatures with high accuracy.