Strain measurements, human body

An attractive feature of fiber sensors is the possibility of performing in vivo tests and monitoring. Numerous fiber-optic sensors have already been described that measure physical parameters of the human body [41]. Pressure, temperature, physiological flow, strain, motion, displacement, or flow velocity can be monitored by optical methods such as variable reflection, laser Doppler velocimetry, optical holography, or diffraction. In this section the application of optosensing methods to the determination of molecular species encountered in clinical and biomedical analysis is described. 

Heat. Personal monitoring of the environmental conditions which impose a heat stress on a worker is impractical, so fixed station measurement of such parameters as wet bulb globe temperature are usually made (see Temperature measurements). These stations are carefully selected so that the results, plus worker location and workload data, can be combined to yield an overall heat stress estimate. Heat strain, the effect on the human, can be estimated from core body temperature, but this is usually only a research tool. 

Strain and pressure sensors and also biochemosensors for measuring characteristics of the human skin are particularly interesting for this kind of applications because they could measure a wide set of parameters such as posture, breathing activity body fluids composition, etc. in a totally nonintrusive way. This characteristic is in fact very interesting for practical applications. For instance, it would allow doctors to monitor the patient status in real time, 24 h a day additionally, it would afford a better quality of life to patients for whom they would be perceived as noninvasive monitoring systems. 

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