Confocal Reflectance Microscope with Dual-Wedge Scanner

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目的总体目标是设计、制造和测试一种紧凑、低成本、共聚焦反射显微镜，能够产生与当前商用仪器相当质量的皮肤图像。新设计采用了扫描仪的概念，其中光路通过两个棱镜，它们围绕光束轴旋转，从而覆盖一个圆形区域。这种技术比现有的使用镜像扫描仪的商业设备的优势是光路的减少，这导致整个设备的尺寸大大减小。使用旋转棱镜进行扫描的概念目前正在东北大学的面包板上进行原理验证。在第一阶段，目标是解决可行性论证，使用面包板仪器和成功的小型化实验，以确定第二阶段将建造的下一代原型仪器的配置。将面包板仪器获得的图像与商用点扫描共聚焦显微镜获得的图像进行比较，并进行定量测试。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this project is to design, fabricate, and test a compact, low-cost, confocal reflectance microscope capable of producing images of skin with quality comparable to those of current commercial instruments. The new design uses a scanner concept in which the optical path is passed through two prisms, which are rotated about the beam axis, resulting in coverage of a circular area. The advantage of this technique over existing commercial devices that use mirror scanners is the decrease in optical path, which leads to a substantially smaller size of the overall device. The concept of scanning using rotating prisms is presently being demonstrated in a breadboard proof-of-principle at Northeastern University. In Phase I, the goals address feasibility demonstration, using the breadboard instrument, and successful miniaturization experiments to determine the configuration of the next generation prototype instrument to be built in Phase II. Images obtained with the breadboard instrument will be compared to those from a commercial point-scanning confocal microscope and quantitative tests will be performed.