Medical apparatus system having optical fiber load sensing capability

1. Apparatus for ablating tissue in a vessel or organ, the apparatus comprising:

an elongate body having proximal and distal ends and a distal extremity, the distal extremity comprising a deformable material and an ablator configured to ablate tissue upon contact of the ablator and introduction of radiofrequency energy to the ablator, the distal extremity further comprising an irrigation channel having a wall disposed with the distal extremity, the wall comprising a material having a coefficient of thermal expansion lower than a coefficient of thermal expansion of the deformable material;

optical fibers comprising optical contact force sensors affixed to the distal extremity, the optical contact force sensors configured to provide an output corresponding to the value of a contact force between the distal extremity and tissue of the organ or vessel; and

a deflection mechanism disposed in the elongate body, the deflection mechanism configured to deflect the elongate body at a location proximal of the distal extremity.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising a storage device associated with the elongate body, the storage device containing a force-strain conversion matrix that enables computation of a three-dimensional force vector corresponding to a contact force between the distal extremity and a tissue wall of the organ or vessel.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising a console having a laser diode, a photodetector and processing logic, wherein the processing logic is programmed to receive an output from the optical strain sensor and to compute the three-dimensional force vector using the force-strain conversion matrix.

4. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the optical fiber contact force sensors are selected from the group consisting of: a Fiber Bragg Grating optical fiber strain sensor, a Long Period Grating optical fiber strain sensor, an Intrinsic Fabry-Perot Interferometer optical fiber strain sensor, an Extrinsic Fabry-Perot Interferometer optical fiber strain sensor, a Michelson interferometer optical fiber strain sensor, a Brillouin scattering optical fiber strain sensor and an intensity interferometer optical fiber strain sensor.

5. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein a distal part of one of the optical fibers extends distally beyond the other optical fibers and further comprises an additional optical fiber sensor for use in determining temperature.

6. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the three optical fibers comprise arms of a Michelson or intensity interferometer optical fiber strain sensor and an additional optical fiber extends through the elongate body and distally beyond the other optical fibers and includes an additional optical fiber sensor to measure temperature.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 , further comprising a fourth optical fiber having an optical fiber sensor slidably disposed within a lumen of the elongate body to measure a temperature of the distal extremity.

8. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the ablator further comprises at least one electrode for measuring an electric potential of the tissue of the organ or vessel.

9. The apparatus of claim 8 , wherein the console is programmed to measure the electrical potential when the contact force falls within a determined range.

10. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the elongate body comprises a liquid crystal polymer.

11. The apparatus of claim 10 , wherein the liquid crystal polymer includes a moisture resistant coating.

12. The apparatus of claim 9 wherein the ablator is configured to ablate tissue only when the contact force falls within a determined range.

13. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the irrigation channel conducts radiofrequency energy to the ablator.

14. The apparatus of claim 13 wherein the distal portion comprises titanium.