Optical biopsy with confocal microendoscopy

Confocal microendoscopy technology provides an instantaneous in vivo microscopic view of the tissue, allowing a physician to survey large areas of tissue. Confocal microendoscopes for in vivo imaging can be constructed to image backscatter of the illumination or fluorescence excited by the illumination. Bench-top fluorescence confocal microscopes consist of one or more laser sources, several pinhole apertures, a scanning unit and at least one spectrally filtered optical detector achieving multi-spectral imaging. The approaches employed to make a confocal microendoscope including coupling a confocal microscope to a fiber-optic imaging bundle that can relay the image plane of the microscope into the body. In other approach a single-mode optical fiber is typically used to bring light into and out of the distal device so that the source and detector can remain outside the patient. Various strategies employed for implementing the required scanning in the distal end of the device including moving the distal end of the single-mode optical fiber via piezo-electric actuators.