Distributed strain sensing medical catheter for epidural anesthesia

Aizhan Issatayeva; Aidana Beisenova; Carlo Molardi; Daniele Tosi

doi:10.1117/12.2502650

23 October 2018 Distributed strain sensing medical catheter for epidural anesthesia

Aizhan Issatayeva, Aidana Beisenova, Carlo Molardi, Daniele Tosi

Proceedings Volume 10820, Optics in Health Care and Biomedical Optics VIII; 108203P (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2502650
Event: SPIE/COS Photonics Asia, 2018, Beijing, China

Abstract

Epidural anesthesia is a pain relief method achieved by injecting anesthetic into the epidural space using a medical catheter inserted in an epidural needle. To reach the epidural space, the needle penetrates through subcutaneous fat, interspinous ligament, intraspinous ligament and ligamentum flavum. Existing manual methods for epidural space identification are based on the decrease of pressure applied to the needle when it penetrates from the dense ligamentum flavum to the soft epidural space. The failure rate of the manual techniques is high. This work proposes to measure the strain using a single-mode optical fiber, mounted externally on the needle. By the use of an optical backscattering reflectometer, it is possible to achieve a distributed strain sensing over the whole length of the needle. The spectral intensity distribution of the scattered light changes when the optical fiber is exposed to strain variations, so a strain pattern can be retrieved by correlating the unperturbed spectrum to the perturbed one. According to the strain pattern, obtained during the needle insertion into a custom made phantom, which mimics the spinal anatomy, when the needle penetrates the ligamentum flavum, a significant strain increase is determined. When the needle pierces the soft epidural space, the strain slightly drops. The proposed design brings the following advantages: optical fiber embedded externally on the needle does not obstruct the flow of anesthetic fluid; the whole needle acts as a sensor which allows the operator to discriminate tissue layers as well as to define the epidural space.

Citation Download Citation

Aizhan Issatayeva, Aidana Beisenova, Carlo Molardi, and Daniele Tosi "Distributed strain sensing medical catheter for epidural anesthesia", Proc. SPIE 10820, Optics in Health Care and Biomedical Optics VIII, 108203P (23 October 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2502650

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