Development of a confocal endoscope for gastrointestinal cancer diagnosis

近年来，各种用于生物组织无损成像的光学显微镜技术得到了发展，包括光学相干断层扫描、反射模去焦显微镜、荧光模共焦显微镜和多光子激发显微镜。每种成像方式都有自己的优点和缺点。此前，共聚焦显微镜在皮肤癌成像方面取得了进展，并显示出在其他癌症诊断方面的潜力。然而，将共聚焦成像模式应用于内窥镜是具有挑战性的，因为必须开发小型化的导管探头，以通过内窥镜仪器通道，其直径只有几毫米。在这项研究中，我们的目标是使用MEMES（微机电系统）技术制造一种微型共聚焦光学探针，该探针将产生组织的组织学样横切面图像和体内组织的3D图像，用于GI（胃肠道）癌症诊断。

In recent years, various optical microscopy techniques have been developed for nondestructiveimaging of biological tissues, including optical coherence tomography, reflectancemodeconfocal microscopy, fluorescence-mode confocal microscopy, and multiphotonexcitation microscopy. Each imaging modality has its own advantages and disadvantages.Previously, confocal microscopy has shown progress in skin cancer imaging anddemonstrated potential in other cancer diagnosis. However, moving confocal imagingmodalities into endoscopy applications is challenging in that miniaturized catheter probeshave to be developed to pass through the endoscope instrument channel that is a fewmillimeter diameter in size. In this research, we aim to use MEMES (MicroelectromechanicalSystems) technology to make a miniature confocal optical probe that will produce histologylikecross sectional images and 3D images of tissue in vivo for GI (gastrointestinal) cancerdiagnosis.