Optical shape
sensing system for sensing a position and / or shape of a
medical device (20) using
backscatter reflectometry, comprising a
broadband light source (12) for generating input light of multiple wavelengths of a
broadband spectrum, an interferometer arrangement (11) comprising a plurality of interferometers including a multi-
core optical fiber (22m, 30), the multi-
core optical fiber (22m, 30) comprising at least two
fiber cores (31, 32a,b,c), wherein each of the interferometers is configured to perform
backscatter reflectometry separately with a corresponding one of a plurality of input light beams divided from the input light and comprises a
fiber splitter (14) for dividing the corresponding input
light beam into a
reference beam and a device beam, an additional
optical fiber (22s) for guiding the
reference beam, a corresponding
fiber core (31, 32a,b,c) of the multi-
core optical fiber (22m, 30) for guiding the device beam to be reflected within the
medical device (20) and for guiding the reflected device beam, and a
fiber coupler (18) for
coupling the reflected device beam with the
reference beam to form an output
light beam, the optical shape
sensing system further comprising a
spectrometer (28) for receiving and interacting with the output
light beam, the
spectrometer (28) comprising a
detector unit (26) for detecting the output light beam.