In the last decades, fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) have become increasingly attractive to medical applications due to their unique properties such as small size, biocompatibility, immunity to electromagnetic interferences, high sensitivity and multiplexing capability. FBGs have been employed in the development of surgical tools, assistive devices, wearables, and biosensors, showing great potentialities for medical uses. This paper reviews the FBG-based measuring systems, their principle of work, and their applications in medicine and healthcare. Particular attention is given to sensing solutions for biomechanics, minimally invasive surgery, physiological monitoring, and medical biosensing. Strengths, weaknesses, open challenges, and future trends are also discussed to highlight how FBGs can meet the demands of nextgeneration medical devices and healthcare system. INDEX TERMS biomechanics, biosensing, fiber Bragg grating sensors, minimally invasive surgery, physiological monitoring.

In an era of unprecedented progress in technology and increase in population age, continuous and close monitoring of elder citizens and patients is becoming more of a necessity than a luxury. Contributing toward this field and enhancing the life quality of elder citizens and patients with disabilities, this work presents the design and implementation of a noninvasive platform and insole fiber Bragg grating sensors network to monitor the vertical ground reaction forces distribution induced in the foot plantar surface during gait and body center of mass displacements. The acquired measurements are a reliable indication of the accuracy and consistency of the proposed solution in monitoring and mapping the vertical forces active on the foot plantar sole, with a sensitivity up to 11.06 ?? pm / N . The acquired measurements can be used to infer the foot structure and health condition, in addition to anomalies related to spine function and other pathologies (e.g., related to diabetes); also its application in rehabilitation robotics field can dramatically reduce the computational burden of exoskeletons’ control strategy. The proposed technology has the advantages of optical fiber sensing (robustness, noninvasiveness, accuracy, and electromagnetic insensitivity) to surpass all drawbacks verified in traditionally used sensing systems (fragility, instability, and inconsistent feedback).

Abstract-In an era of unprecedented progress in sensing technology and communications, health services are able to evolve towards a close monitoring of patients and elderly citizens, without jeopardizing their daily routines, through health applications on their mobile devices, in what is known as e-Health. Within this field, we propose an optical fiber sensor (OFS) based system for simultaneous monitoring of shear and plantar pressure during gait movement. These parameters are considered to be two key factors in gait analysis which can help in early diagnosis of multiple anomalies, such as diabetic foot ulcerations or in physical rehabilitation scenarios.The proposed solution is a biaxial OFS based on two in-line fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), which were inscribed in the same optical fiber and placed individually in two adjacent cavities, forming a small sensing cell. Such design presents a more compact and resilient solution with higher accuracy, when compared to the existing electronic systems.The implementation of the proposed elements into an insole is also described, showing the compactness of the sensing cells, which can be easily integrated into a non-invasive mobile e-Health solution for a continuous remote gait analysis of patients and elder citizens. The reported results show that the proposed system outperforms existing solutions, in the sense that it is able to dynamically discriminate shear and plantar pressure during gait.