A method of making a catheter balloon or other expandable tubular medical device or component thereof, in which an assembly of heat shrink material on an outer surface of coaxially disposed first and second tubes is heated to radially shrink the heat shrink material and reduce the outer diameter of the first tube. The liquid perfluoro-n-alkanes of the invention are useful in optical couplants, optical cements, optical elements, optical inspection media for semiconductor wafers and devices, and immersion photolithography at 157 nm exposure wavelength. An apparatus for adaptive quantization in process of imagevideo coding is provided. A single-fiber passive optical network is disclosed that uses a plurality of passive nodes connected in the optical fiber between the interfaces, wherein in the passive nodes 2-by-2 splitterscombiners are used to couple optical power from and into the optical fiber at a predetermined split ratio.