Abstract

Many diagnostic imaging applications, including fetoscopy, mammary ductoscopy, and angioscopy, require minimization of endoscope diamefers. Currently, the low number of resolvable points that are provided by small diameter (<0.5 mm) endoscopes limits the clinical uses of these devices. Since optical fibers arc of finite diameter, only a limited number of fibers can be incorporated into one imaging bundle. For example, for a 0.5 mm diameter fiber optic imaging bundle with individual fiber diameters of 5 µm. the total number of resolvable points is 8000. In this abstract. we describe an imaging device that uses spectral encoding to obtain real-time images. Miniature endoscopes based on this technique have the potential to increase the resolution by a factor of more than 20 over fiber-optic imaging bundles of the same diameter.

© 2001 Optical Society of America