Optical Fiber Ball Resonator Sensor Spectral Interrogation through Undersampled KLT: Application to Refractive Index Sensing and Cancer Biomarker Biosensing

Optical fiber ball resonators based on single-mode fibers in the infrared range are an emerging technology for refractive index sensing and biosensing. These devices are easy and rapid to fabricate using a CO(2) laser splicer and yield a very low finesse reflection spectrum with a quasi-random pattern. In addition, they can be functionalized for biosensing by using a thin-film sputtering method. A common problem of this type of device is that the spectral response is substantially unknown, and poorly correlated with the size and shape of the spherical device. In this work, we propose a detection method based on Karhunen−Loeve transform (KLT), applied to the undersampled spectrum measured by an optical backscatter reflectometer. We show that this method correctly detects the response of the ball resonator in any working condition, without prior knowledge of the sensor under interrogation. First, this method for refractive index sensing of a gold-coated resonator is applied, showing 1594 RIU(−1) sensitivity; then, this concept is extended to a biofunctionalized ball resonator, detecting CD44 cancer biomarker concentration with a picomolar-level limit of detection (19.7 pM) and high specificity (30–41%).