Spectrally-Encoded Endoscopy: developing a disposable, highly-flexible hydrogel optical fiber based endoscope

Endoscopy enables minimally-invasive diagnostic imaging to reduce the risk of complications, recovery times, and hospitalization costs. The early endoscope designs featured a bundle of optical fibers. Modern endoscopes still consist of bundles of optical fibers to transmit 2D images; their larger models employ solid-state CCD cameras for high-resolution imaging. Fiber-bundle endos-copes having submillimeter diameters are not widely adopted due to their rigidity and low image quality. They have low numbers of pixels and superimposed a honeycomb pattern as pixilation artefacts.

This project aims to develop a disposable, highly-flexible hydrogel optical fiber based endoscope that will offer high-resolution imaging with minimised tissue damage. A spectrally-encoded endoscopy (SEE) system will be utilised to deliver broadband light through the hydrogel optical fiber and the backscattered light will be collected and analysed by a line-scan camera. A hydrogel optical fiber will be fabricated and a diffraction grating will be incorporated at its tip. The hydrogel fiber endoscope will be tested in a living mouse tumor model to optimise the resolution and compare the performance with a commercial solid-state optical fiber endoscope.

The successful student will form part of a multidisciplinary team and will be supervised by Dr. Ali K. Yetisen based in the Institute of Translational Medicine (www.itmbirmingham.co.uk) and the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of Birmingham.