Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) Sensor for the Monitoring of Cardiac Parameters in Healthcare Facilities

Fiber Bragg grating sensing technology provides a new look to the healthcare monitoring system due to its spectral encoding capacity, dielectric property, sensitivity, inert, nontoxic, resistive to the electromagnetic environment, self-referencing, and low cost. This article presents a design and construction of an FBG sensor for the monitoring of cardiac vibrations. A sensor element is designed by depositing polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer on the FBG sensing element. The elastic and thermal property of the sensor element is also discussed in this article. The stress and strain distribution profile is addressed using finite element analysis (FEA). Further, the bonding of the FBG sensor element is discussed in this article with adequate design specifications. In addition to the FBG sensor design considerations, the real-time acquisition of the cardiac signal is also experimented with in this research work to validate the sensor performance. Finally, the architecture of a cardiac monitoring approach by utilizing the Internet of things (IoT) and machine learning (ML) is proposed in this article.