Our results demonstrate that light, delivered transcutaneously, improves recovery after injury and suggests that light will be a useful treatment for human SCI.
The mid-infrared (mid-IR) should be a fruitful area for medical research and instrumentation since this is the region where the most identifiable molecular molecules absorb and radiate. Due to the unique specificity of a biological molecule's spectrum in the mid-IR, semiconductor lasers in the mid-IR have a unique advantage over ultraviolet and visible or near-IR lasers. Small room-temperature laser diodes can be used in small hand-held, portable, and hopefully inexpensive, medical devices for rapid measurement, possibly in patient-operated home-care devices. Since the mid-IR radiation can be connected with otherwise invisible chemical processes, it becomes possible to watch the biochemical processes of life reveal themselves. Until recently, work in this region had been handicapped by lack of sources, detectors and optical materials, but this is changing, as this conference shows, and important new directions lie ahead.
An experimental realization of a simple all-fiber-optic sensor for liquid level measurement is demonstrated. It is an intensity-modulated on-off switching sensor whose operating principle is based on the frustrated-total-internal-reflection effect caused by the refractive-index change of the surrounding medium. The basic optical element in the scheme is a sensing single fiber which serves simultaneously to transmit both the forward laser emission to the investigated medium and the useful signal backreflected from the fiber tip that is the sensing element. In order to achieve a maximum sensor sensitivity, we use a specially shaped fiber tip in two profile variants: angled and retroreflecting. The experimental investigations of the sensor properties and the results obtained at the pure-water level measurement confirm the sensor potential in liquid level determination with a high accuracy, exceeding 10 m.
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