Industrial and medical applications of fiber Bragg gratings(Invited Paper)

The uses of optical fibers are numerous, and over the past few decades, they have extended from optical fiber communications to a wide variety of sensing applications. In particular, fiber Bragg grating(FBG) sensors inscribed in single-mode optical fibers offer significant advantages over more conventional electrical sensors and have been successfully deployed in many different industries. In this Review, we review the applications of intrinsic FBG pressure and flow sensors in oil and gas and the deployment of FBG sensing networks in railways.The promising prospect of using polymer FBGs in wearable medical devices is also described.