Development of a confocal endoscope for gastrointestinal cancer diagnosis

近年来，各种光学显微镜技术已经发展起来，用于生物组织的非破坏性成像，包括光学相干层析成像、反射模式消焦显微镜、荧光模式共焦显微镜和多光子激发显微镜。每种成像方式都有其优缺点。以前，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中的潜力。然而，将共焦成像模式转移到内窥镜应用是具有挑战性的，因为必须开发微型导管探头来穿过直径为几毫米的内窥镜仪器通道。在这项研究中，我们的目标是使用MEMES(微型机电系统)技术来制造一种微型共聚焦光学探头，该探头将产生类似组织学的横截面图像和活体组织的3D图像，用于胃肠道(GI)癌症的诊断。

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.