Light properties improvement of light emitting woven textiles with optical fibres for photodynamic therapy

For an efficient and less painful photodynamic therapy (PDT), a light emitting fabric (LEF) was woven from plastic optical fibres (POF) aiming at the treatment of dermatologic diseases such as Actinic Keratosis (AK). The traditional PDT treatments applied with external light sources deliver a non-uniform light distribution on the skin surface due to the anatomical particularity of the human body (head vertex, hand, etc.). Therefore a successful PDT obligates a homogenous and reproducible light delivery. With this purpose, plastic optical fibres (POF) have been woven in textile in order to create macro-bendings and thus emit out the injected light directly to the skin. To improve the light intensity and light emitting homogeneity of the LEF, Doehlert Experimental Design is applied. Fifteen experiments performed to analyze the response surface. Light properties of the prototypes were evaluated. The proposed models fitted well with the experimental data and enabled the optimal set up the warp yarns tensions. This study showed that RSM was a suitable tool to optimize the models of light diffusion properties.