A portable optical fiber probe for in vivo brain temperature measurements

We report on the development of an optical fiber based probe for in vivo measurements of brain temperature. By using a thin layer of rare-earth doped tellurite glass on the tip of a silica optical fiber a durable probe, suitable for long-term in vivo measurements of temperature can be fabricated. The probe can be interrogated using a portable optical measurement setup, allowing for measurements to be performed outside of standard optical laboratories as no alignment of components is required. This setup is deployed to a medical research laboratory to show preliminary results on the use of these optical fibers for in vivo pre-clinical measurements of brain temperature.