Fiber Bragg grating-based shape sensing: a review and perspective

Abstract

Fiber optic shape sensing has a great potential for diverse medical and industrial applications to measure curvatures and even shapes. Featuring small footprint, strong immunity to radiation and high flexibility integration, fiber optic shape sensing opens up a new era in the fields of position tracking, human wearable devices, catheter navigation, bending detection and deformation monitoring. This paper focuses on a branch of fiber optic shape sensing techniques, with an emphasis on shape sensing based on fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). Key technologies of shape sensing based on FBG are introduced in detail together with a critical view of its evolutionary trend. In addition, the major problems that exist in FBG shape sensing have been discussed in the end.