Low-cost, chromatic confocal endomicroscope for cellular imaging in vivo

We have developed a low-cost, chromatic confocal endomicroscope (CCE) that can image a cross-section of the tissue at cellular resolution. In CCE, a custom miniature objective lens was used to focus different wavelengths into different tissue depths. Therefore, each tissue depth was encoded with the wavelength. A custom miniature spectrometer was used to spectrally-analyze light reflected from the tissue and generate cross-sectional confocal images. The CCE prototype had a diameter of 9.5 mm and a length of 68 mm. Material cost of the CCE prototype was less than $1,500. Measured resolution was high, 2 µm and 4 µm for lateral and axial directions, respectively. Preliminary results showed that CCE can visualize cellular details from cross-sections of the tissue in vivo down to the tissue depth of 100 µm.