Sensor could enable scar-free surgery

17 Jun 2002

German and Canadian scientists have developed an optical sensor that could reduce scarring in skin following surgery.
Scientists at Roche Diagnostics in Mannheim, Germany discovered that light is scattered less in the direction of fibers under the surface of the skin, known as Langer's lines. Cutting along these lines severs fewer fibers and results in reduced scarring..
Working with researchers at McMaster University, in Ontario, Canada, the team at Roche was able to devise a detector to measure differences in tissue scarring..
The sensor comprises a photometric, fiber-coupled CCD and an optical-illumination fiber that delivers wavelengths of 810 nm..
The skin makes direct contact with a 3 mm fiber-optic faceplate that has an area of 650 mm2. This plate is effectively a bundle of millions of thin parallel fibers that run perpendicular to the skin and which lead the diffusely-reflected light from the skin to the opposite surface of the plate..
A second, similar fiber plate is bonded directly onto the CCD chip and placed in contact with the first fiber plate. In this way, the CCD acquires 1:1 images of the surface of the skin without the need for a lens system.

Story courtesy of Opto and Laser Europe magazine.