500 μm field-of-view probe-based confocal microendoscope for large-area visualization in the gastrointestinal tract
Hua Li, Zhengyi Hao, Jiangfeng Huang, Tingting Lu, Qian Liu, Ling Fu
Abstract
Rapid large-area tissue imaging at the cellular resolution is important for clinical diagnosis. We present a probe-based confocal microendoscope (pCM) with a field-of-view (FOV) diameter over 500 μm, lateral resolution of 1.95 μm, and outer diameter of 2.6 mm, compatible with the biopsy channel of conventional gastroscopes. Compared to a conventional pCM, our system’s FOV increased by a factor of 4 while maintaining the probe size and cellular resolution—comparable to the FOV of Zeiss Axio Observer’s <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline" id="m1"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>20</mml:mn> <mml:mi>×</mml:mi> <mml:mi>/</mml:mi> <mml:mn>0.8</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> numerical aperture objective lens. Ex vivo imaging of wide areas in healthy and diseased rat gastrointestinal tract tissues demonstrates the system’s practicality.