Method and apparatus for compensating for a time-varying disturbance in interferometric sensing systems

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9841269-B2
Application number	US-201214362759-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 3, 2012
Priority date	Dec 5, 2011
Publication date	Dec 12, 2017
Grant date	Dec 12, 2017

Abstract

An optical interrogation system, e.g., an OFDR-based system, measures local changes, of index of refraction of a sensing light guide subjected to a time-varying disturbance. Interferometric measurement signals detected for a length of the sensing light guide are transformed into the spectral domain. A time varying signal is determined from the transformed interferometric measurement data set. A compensating signal is determined from the time varying signal which is used to compensate the interferometric measurement data set for the time-varying disturbance. Further robustness is achieved using averaging and strain compensation. The compensation technique may be applied along the length of the light guide.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. An optical interrogation system for measuring a parameter of a sensing light guide subjected to a time-varying disturbance, comprising:
an optical interferometric interrogator;
optical detection circuitry, coupled to the optical interferometric interrogator, for detecting optical interferometric measurement signals for a length of the sensing light guide, where the sensing light guide includes a series of segments at corresponding locations along the…

Assignees

• Intuitive Surgical Operations

Inventors

• Froggatt Mark E
• Sang Alexander K
• Gifford Dawn K
• Klein Justin W

Classifications

• G01D5/3537

  Physics · mapped topic

• G01M11/3172

  Physics · mapped topic

• G01B11/18

  Physics · mapped topic

• G01L1/242

  Physics · mapped topic

• G01B9/0209

  Physics · mapped topic