Design and Fabrication of a Multi-modal Confocal Endo-Microscope for Biomedical Imaging

Abstract

Optical microscopes are widely used for medical imaging these days, but biopsy is a lengthy process that causes many problems during the ex-vivo imaging procedure. The endo-microscope has been studied to increase accessibility to the human body and to get in-vivo images to use for medical diagnosis. This research proposes a multi-modal confocal endo-microscope for bio-medical imaging. We introduce the design process for a small endoscopic probe and a coupling mechanism for the probe to make the multi-modal confocal endo-microscope. The endoscopic probe was designed to decrease chromatic and spherical aberrations, which deteriorate the images obtained with the conventional GRIN lens. Fluorescence and reflectance images of various samples were obtained with the proposed endo-microscope. We evaluated the performance of the proposed endo-microscope by analyzing the acquired images, and demonstrate the possibilities of in-vivo medical imaging for early diagnosis.