This paper reports the implementation of an optical fiber sensor to measure the refractive index in aqueous media based on localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). We have used a novel technique known as photodeposition to immobilize silver nanoparticles on the optical fiber end. This technique has a simple instrumentation, involves laser light via an optical fiber and silver nanoparticles suspended in an aqueous medium. The optical sensor was assembled using a tungsten lamp as white light, a spectrometer, and an optical fiber with silver nanoparticles. The response of this sensor is such that the LSPR peak wavelength is linearly shifted to longer wavelengths as the refractive index is increased, showing a sensitivity of 67.6 nm/RIU. Experimental results are presented.

The generation and manipulation of microbubbles by means of temperature gradients induced by low power laser radiation is presented. A laser beam (λ = 1064 nm) is divided into two equal parts and coupled to two multimode optical fibers. The opposite ends of each fiber are aligned and separated a distance D within an ethanol solution. Previously, silver nanoparticles were photo deposited on the optical fibers ends. Light absorption at the nanoparticles produces a thermal gradient capable of generating a microbubble at the optical fibers end in non-absorbent liquids. The theoretical and experimental studies carried out showed that by switching the thermal gradients, it is possible to generate forces in opposite directions, causing the migration of microbubbles from one fiber optic tip to another. Marangoni force induced by surface tension gradients in the bubble wall is the driving force behind the manipulation of microbubbles. We estimated a maximum Marangoni force of 400nN for a microbubble with a radius of 110 μm.

A high-precision and fast algorithm for computation of Jacobi-Fourier moments (JFMs) is presented. A fast recursive method is developed for the radial polynomials that occur in the kernel function of the JFMs. The proposed method is numerically stable and very fast in comparison with the conventional direct method. Moreover, the algorithm is suitable for computation of the JFMs of the highest orders. The JFMs are generic expressions to generate orthogonal moments changing the parameters α and β of Jacobi polynomials. The quality of the description of the proposed method with α and β parameters known is studied. Also, a search is performed of the best parameters, α and β, which significantly improves the quality of the reconstructed image and recognition. Experiments are performed on standard test images with various sets of JFMs to prove the superiority of the proposed method in comparison with the direct method. Furthermore, the proposed method is compared with other existing methods in terms of speed and accuracy.

No abstract

When strong Jaundice is presented, babies or adults should be subject to clinical exam like "serum bilirubin" which can cause traumas in patients. Often jaundice is presented in liver disease such as hepatitis or liver cancer. In order to avoid additional traumas we propose to detect jaundice (icterus) in newborns or adults by using a not pain method. By acquiring digital images in color, in palm, soles and forehead, we analyze RGB attributes and diffuse reflectance spectra as the parameter to characterize patients with either jaundice or not, and we correlate that parameters with the level of bilirubin. By applying support vector machine we distinguish between healthy and sick patients.