Development of a confocal endoscope for gastrointestinal cancer diagnosis

近年来，各种光学显微镜技术已被开发用于生物组织的非破坏性成像，包括光学相干断层扫描，反射模式消焦显微镜，荧光模式共聚焦显微镜，和多光子激发显微镜。每一种成像方式都有其自身的优点和缺点，以前，共聚焦显微镜在皮肤癌成像方面取得了进展，并在其他癌症的诊断中表现出了潜力。然而，将共焦成像模式移动到内窥镜应用中是具有挑战性的，因为必须开发小型化导管探针以穿过尺寸为几毫米直径的内窥镜器械通道。在本研究中，我们的目标是使用MEMES（MicroelectromechanicalSystems）技术，使一个微型共焦光学探针，将产生组织学的横向截面图像和三维图像的组织在体内的胃肠道（胃肠）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.