Patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer have a 5-year survival rate of only 3%. Endoscopic imaging of the pancreas is limited by the small size of the pancreatic duct, which has an average size of 3 mm. To improve imaging capabilities for the pancreatic duct, two small catheter-based imaging systems have been developed that will fit through the therapeutic channel of a clinical endoscope and into the pancreatic duct. One is a miniature endoscope designed to provide macro-imaging of tissue with both white light reflectance and fluorescence imaging modes. The 1.75 mm diameter catheter consists of separate illumination and imaging channels. At a nominal focal distance of 10 mm, the field of view of the system is ~ 10 mm, and the corresponding in-plane resolution is 60 microns. To complement the broadfield view of the tissue, a confocal microendoscope with 2 micron lateral resolution over a field of view of 450 microns and 25 micron axial resolution has been developed. With an outer diameter of 3 mm, the catheter in this system will also fit through the therapeutic channel and into the pancreatic duct. Images of tissue with both the miniature endoscope and confocal microendoscope are presented.
KEYWORDS: Confocal microscopy, Tissues, Objectives, Fiber optics, Chemical elements, Endoscopy, Natural surfaces, Modulation transfer functions, In vivo imaging, Tissue optics
A fluorescence confocal microendoscope has been developed to provide high resolution, in-vivo imaging of cellular pathology. The microendoscope employs a fiber-optic imaging bundle, a miniature objective, and a miniature focusing mechanism to allow imaging in remote locations of the body. The system uses a 2mm diameter flexible catheter that is capped by a rigid opto-mechanical system measuring 3mm in diameter and 12mm in length. The small size of the confocal microendoscope was chosen so that it may be routed through the therapeutic channel of a clinical endoscope, adding microscopic functionality to conventional endoscopy procedures. The confocal nature of the microendoscope provides optical sectioning with 2 micron lateral resolution and 25 micron axial resolution. The pneumatic focusing mechanism located in the distal opto-mechanical assembly allows for imaging to a maximum depth of 200 micron in the tissue. The system is capable of providing conventional grayscale fluorescence images at 10 frames-per-second as well as spatially resolved multi-spectral fluorescence images at several seconds a frame. Preliminary in-vivo results are be presented.
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