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This thesis reports an optical temperature measurement based on the two-colour method using colour-band filters to examine the application of it in novel ways. This technique uses a high-speed camera to detect the visible radiation from grey bodies. As a result of using the R and G channels, this modified two-colour method was found to be calibrated well with the standard temperature. The uniqueness of this research is the use of SiC fibre as a grey body emitter, allowing the temperature measurement to carry out in the situation of the hot gas and flame with soot deficiency. By conducting the numerical analysis the time taken to achieve the thermal equilibrium between the fibre and its adjacent gas was found to be in a few milliseconds.

To understand how stem cells functionally couple with native cardiomyocytes is crucial for cell-based therapies to restore the loss of cardiomyocytes that occurs during heart infarction and other cardiac diseases. Due to the complexity of the in vivo environment, our knowledge of cell coupling is heavily dependent on cell-culture models. However, conventional in vitro studies involve undefined cell shapes and random length of cell-cell contacts in addition to the presence of multiple homotypic and heterotypic contacts between interacting cells. Thus, it has not been feasible to study electrical coupling corresponding to isolated specific types of cell contact modes. To address this issue, we used microfabrication techniques to develop different geometrically-defined stem cell-cardiomyocyte contact assays to comparatively and quantitatively study functional stem cell-cardiomyocyte electrical coupling. Through geometric confinements, we will construct a matrix of identical microwells, and each was constructed as a specific microenvironment. Using laser-guided cell micropatterning technique, individual stem cells or cardiomyocytes can be deposited into the microwells to form certain contact mode. In this research, we firstly constructed an in-vivo like cardiac muscle fiber microenvironment, and the electrical conductivity of stem cells was investigated by inserting stem cells as cellular bridges. Then, the electrical coupling between cardiomyocytes and stem cells was studied at single-cell level by constructing contact-promotive/-preventive microenvironments.