Background\r\nFiber-based optical spectroscopy has been widely used for biomedical applications. However, the effect of probe-sample distance on the collection efficiency has not been well investigated.\r\nMethod\r\nIn this paper, we presented a theoretical model to maximize the illumination and collection efficiency in designing fiber optic probes for biomedical spectra measurement. This model was in general applicable to probes with single or multiple fibers at an arbitrary incident angle. In order to demonstrate the theory, a fluorescence spectrometer was used to measure the fluorescence of human finger skin at various probe-sample distances. The fluorescence spectrum and the total fluorescence intensity were recorded.\r\nResults\r\nThe theoretical results show that for single fiber probes, contact measurement always provides the best results. While for multi-fiber probes, there is an optimal probe distance. When a 400- �µm excitation fiber is used to deliver the light to the skin and another six 400- �µm fibers surrounding the excitation fiber are used to collect the fluorescence signal, the experimental results show that human finger skin has very strong fluorescence between 475 nm and 700 nm under 450 nm excitation. The fluorescence intensity is heavily dependent on the probe-sample distance and there is an optimal probe distance.\r\nConclusions\r\nWe investigated a number of probe-sample configurations and found that contact measurement could be the primary choice for single-fiber probes, but was very inefficient for multi-fiber probes. There was an optimal probe-sample distance for multi-fiber probes. By carefully choosing the probe-sample distance, the collection efficiency could be enhanced by 5-10 times. Our experiments demonstrated that the experimental results of the probe-sample distance dependence of collection efficiency in multi-fiber probes were in general agreement with our theory.
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