Fast confocal endomicroscopy based on multi-fiber parallel scanning

Confocal endomicroscopy has been developed very quickly for its high resolution and high sensitivity. It could be used for early diagnoses of disease, such as cancer. In existing confocal endomicroscopy, fiber bundle or single fiber was used for transferring exciting laser and excited fluorescence signal. Neither of these technologies had high resolution nor high imaging speed. In this paper, a fast confocal endomicroscopy(FCM) is presented. In the FCM, a multi-fiber array with 9 fibers is used for light signal transferring, including exciting laser and excited fluorescence. In the distal end of the endomicroscopy, the fibers are arranged in two dimension and form a 3X3 area array. The fibers are not arrayed closely, but with space. Under driving of a MEMS scanner, the fibers move and scan tissue in parallel. Each fiber takes charge of 1/9 of the whole diagnoses field. Then the whole field is scanned and image is acquired. In the other end, the fibers are arranged in linear array. Exciting laser is coupled into the linear fiber array and transferred to the distal end of the area fiber array. Fluorophore molecules in tissue are excited and emit fluorescence. The fluorescence is collected into the 3X3 area fiber array and transferred to the linear array end. An imaging objective lens couples the fluorescence from the fiber end to a CCD, which converts the light intensity into electrical signal. Image of tissue is reconstructed from the electrical signal. By parallel scanning, the imaging speed of confocal endomicroscope is improved by several times, which is associated with the number of fibers in the array.