September 2023. SHUTE sensors are used for monitoring temperature inside the brain of a living animal.

SHUTE polymer optical fiber sensors have been successfully employed from the Neural Devices group of @DTU Electro (tagged) at the Technical University of Denmark in collaboration with other institutions for temperature monitoring in different depths of a rat’s brain. Here passages from the academic paper:

“Optical fibers are an alternative promising platform for physiological sensing due to their small dimension, high sensitivity, and compatibility with electromagnetic equipment. Good thermal response of silica fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) has been demonstrated in a rat brain during temperature changes induced by methamphetamine and metformin drugs. However, the high Young’s modulus of glass fibers significantly increases the inflammation due to the foreign body response compared to soft polymer materials, and their brittle and fragile nature can be a matter of concern when conducting in vivo experiments. Therefore, polymer optical fibers (POFs) are considered the most suitable platform for high-resolution biosensing due to their high sensitivity, flexibility, and biocompatibility.”

“Measuring the temperature locally in different brain regions is extremely important to understand the brain function and neural activity. Here we performed an acute in vivo experiment to map the temperature of the cerebral cortex, corpus callosum, and striatum (caudate putamen), in an anesthetized rat.”

“In conclusion, we anticipate that the developed flexible polymer FBG-based probe can work as an efficient sensor for high-resolution measurements of local temperature in the brain.”

This combined with the tests SHUTE and University of Copenhagen performed on a 9.4T MRI scanner (MRI Scanner Results November 2020), could maybe wake an interest and add new sensing abilities in sophisticated environments.

The experiments mentioned in the paper were even funded by: “Lundbeck Foundation (Multi-BRAIN R276-2018-869, R380-2021-1171).” Which indicates a more general interest. 

Read all about it here.

“All surgical procedures have been approved by the Animal Experiments Inspectorate under the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture, and Fisheries, and all procedures adhere to the European guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals, EU directive 2010/63/EU.”