Real-time frequency domain temperature and oxygen sensor with a single optical fiber

The combined excited-state phosphorescence lifetimes of an alexandrite crystal and platinum tetraphenylporphyrin Pt(TPP) in a single-fiber sensor are used to monitor temperature and oxygen concentration in the physiological range from 15-45 degrees C and 0-50% O-2 with precision of 0.24 degrees C and 0.15% O-2 and accuracy of 0.28 degrees C and 0.2% O-2. A 500-mu m cubic alexandrite crystal bound to the distal end of a 750-mu m-diameter optical fiber core and the Pt(TPP) coated circumferentially with a length of 1 cm from the end of the same fiber are excited with pulsed super-bright blue LED light. This apparatus uses a 125-kHz sampler for data acquisition and frequency domain methods for signal processing. The instrument amplifies both the dc and ac components of the photomultiplier output and band limits the signal to 20 kHz. The fundamental frequency of the excitation is set to 488.3 Hz and the highest harmonic used is the 35th. This bandlimited signal is sampled and averaged over a few hundred cycles in the time domain. The frequency domain representation of the data is obtained by employing fast Fourier transform algorithms. The phase delay and the modulation ratio of each sampled harmonic are then computed. At least four log-spaced harmonic phases or modulations are averaged before decoding the two lifetimes of temperature and oxygen phosphorescent sensors. A component of zero lifetime is introduced to account for the excitation backscatter leakage through optical interference filters seen by the photodetector. Linear and second-order empirical polynomials are employed to compute the temperatures and oxygen concentrations from the inverse lifetimes. In the situation of constant oxygen concentration, the lifetime of Pt(TPP) changes with temperature but can be compensated using the measured temperature lifetime. The system drift is 0.24 degrees C for the temperature measurement and 0.59% for the oxygen concentration measurement over 30 h of continuous operation. The instrumentation and methods allow for 6-s update times and 90-s full-response times.