Fibre-optic array for curvature assessment: application in otitis diagnosis.

Area of Science:

• Optics and Photonics
• Biomedical Engineering
• Materials Science

Background:

• Assessing surface topography is vital for various scientific and medical applications.
• Existing methods for surface shape analysis can be contact-dependent or lack precision for diffusely scattering materials.
• Distinguishing between convex and concave surfaces is particularly important for diagnosing conditions like otitis media.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and validate a contact-free optical sensor for characterizing the surface shapes of diffusely scattering media.
• To develop a mathematical model for simulating the sensor's response.
• To establish a method for distinguishing convex from concave surfaces.

Main Methods:

• A novel contact-free sensor utilizing two parallel optical-fibre arrays was developed.
• The sensor sequentially illuminates objects and detects back-scattered photons to form a source-detector intensity matrix.
• Experimental data from polyacetal plastic surfaces were compared with simulations from a developed mathematical model.

Main Results:

• The sensor successfully recorded intensity matrices for convex and concave surfaces.
• Experimental results closely matched the predictions of the mathematical model, validating the system.
• A convex/concave discriminator index (D) was defined, showing positive values for convex and negative for concave surfaces.
• The index demonstrated a relative dynamic range of 1.37 for convex and 0.68 for concave surfaces at a 4.5 mm distance.

Conclusions:

• The developed optical sensor system can reliably distinguish between convex and concave surfaces.
• The discriminator index (D) provides a quantitative measure for surface curvature assessment.
• This technology holds potential for non-invasive diagnostic tools, such as in otitis media diagnosis.