Dear Colleagues,

Medical Catheters are well established and ubiquitous in modern clinical practice. Optical Fibre Sensor (OFS) technology for medical sensors is a rapidly-growing field of research, which lends itself well for use within catheters for making a wide range of medical and/or biomedical pressure. OFS have many attractive features which allow them to be effectively deployed as sensors within existing and purpose designed novel medical catheters. These include miniaturization, immunity to external electromagnetic radiation, e.g., in the case of Magnetic Resonance Imaging and other imaging/scanning systems, their ability to be functionalised, and specific performance advantages such as capability for rapid response, high sensitivity coupled with specificity, especially as chemical and/or physical sensors in biological sensing.

The concept of the ‘Smart Catheter’ approach is designed to transform conventional catheters and optical fibre sensors into a robust technology which is ideally suited for undertaking a wide range of in vivo real time medical measurements. The Optical Fibre Sensing approach means that the light signal interaction with its environment can take place at the tip of the fibre or along an extended surface in the sensor location e.g. by evanescent wave interaction. The broad approach to sensing means that several different parameters can be measured covering a wide range of clinical applications.

Specifically, Smart Catheter technology platforms can be subdivided in three main classes:

– Single point sensor within catheter;

– Quasi-Distributed or multi-point sensor within a catheter;

– Modified catheter coupled with the sensor. In this case, the catheter itself has been modified or designed from scratch to play an important role in coupling the measurand signal to the sensor.

This Special Issue is proposed to collect invited manuscripts written by the leading authorities in the field. Specifically, with special focus on chemical and biological sensing applications, this Issue will include both research and review papers dealing with:

- successful development and/or demonstration of novel Smart Catheter based sensing systems;

- integration of Smart Catheter with existing medical systems;

- Advancements in materials for use in Smart Catheters e.g. coatings for improved performance;

- emerging methodologies for fabrication methods feature placement on Smart Catheters, e.g., using femto-second laser based systems.

Prof. Dr. Elfed Lewis
Prof. Dr. Andrea Cusano
Prof. Dr. Minghong Yang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Optical Fibre Sensors
• Medical Catheters
• Nanophotonics
• Plasmonics
• SERS
• Metamaterials
• Label free sensing
• Laser Etching
• Chemical Etching
• Biosensing
• Multimaterial Optical Fibers
• Lab in a Needle
• Biomedical Devices