Ultrathin Single and Multi-Channel Fiberscopes for Biomedical Imaging

Abstract

Ultrathin fiberscopes typically have an imaging channel and an illumination channeland are available in diameters ranging from 0.5 mm to 2.5 mm. The minimum diam-eter can be reduced by combining the illumination and imaging paths into a singlefiberoptic channel. Constructing a single channel fiberscope requires a technique ofilluminating the tissue, while minimizing the Fresnel reflections and scatter withinthe common illumination and detection channel.A single channel fiberscope should image diffusely reflected light from tissue illu-minated with light filtered for the visible wavelength range (450 - 650 nm). Simplycombining the illumination and collection paths via a beamsplitter results in a lowobject to background signal ratio. The low contrast image is due to a low collectionefficiency of light from the ob ject as well as a high background signal from the Fresnelreflection at the proximal surface of the fiber bundle, where the illumination enters thefiber bundle. The focus of the dissertation is the investigation of methods to reducethe background signal from the proximal surface of the fiber bundle. Three systemswere tested. The first system uses a coherent fiber bundle with an AR-coating on theproximal face. The second system incorporates crossed polarizers into the light path.In addition, a technique was developed, whereby a portion of the image numericalaperture is devoted to illumination and a portion to image signal detection. Thistechnique is called numerical aperture sharing (NA sharing).This dissertation presents the design, construction, testing, and comparison ofthe three single channel fiberscopes. In addition, preliminary results of a study aimedat the usefulness of broadband diffuse reflectance imaging for the identification andtracking of disease progression in mouse esophagus are presented.