High Numerical Aperture Injection-Molded Miniature Objective For Fiber-Optic Confocal Reflectance Microscopy

Abstract

This dissertation presents the design of a miniature injection-molded objective lens for a fiber-optic confocal reflectance microscope. This is part of an effort to demonstrate the ability to fabricate low cost, high performance biomedical optics for high resolution in vivo imaging. Disposable endoscopic microscope objectives could help in vivo confocal microscopy technology mature to enable large-scale clinical screening and detection of early cancers and pre-cancerous lesions. This five lens plastic objective has been tested as a stand-alone optical system and has been coupled to a confocal microscope for in vivo imaging of cells and tissue. Changing the spacing and rotation of the individual optical elements can compensate for fabrication inaccuracies and improve performance. An optical-bench testing system was constructed to allow interactive alignment during testing. The modulation transfer function (MTF) of the miniature objective lens is determined using the slanted-edge method. A custom MATLAB program, edgeMTF, was written to collect, analyize, and record test data. An estimated Strehl ratio of 0.64 and an MTF value of 0.70, at the fiber-optic bundle Nyquist frequency, have been obtained. The main performance limitations of the miniature objective are mechanical alignment and flow-induced birefringence. Annealing and experimental injection molding runs were conducted in effort to reduce birefringence.