A fiber endoscope developed by a Jena research team opens up the possibility of achieving a diagnosis in real time. The probe combines three imaging techniques at once and delivers high-resolution tissue images from inside the body. They contain both morphological and biochemical information.
The endoscope offers the potential to quickly and reliably differentiate between healthy and diseased tissue - in vivo, i.e. in a minimally invasive examination in which the probe is placed directly on the suspected tissue.
The fiber technology team at Leibniz IPHT developed a special microstructured optical glass fiber for this purpose. In combination with an intelligent and ultra-compact optical concept from Grintech, it leads to a completely fiber-based endoscopic setup for multimodal non-linear endoscopy. It captures tissue images as they are currently taken with a commercially available, bulky laser scanning microscope and is comparatively inexpensive to manufacture. In the future, the new multimodal imaging probe could open up new possibilities for label-free tissue diagnostics in surgery and endoscopy - for example, to clearly identify tumor margins during surgery.
This would not only help to improve the chances of recovery, but could also save considerable costs in the healthcare system by helping to avoid expensive and stressful follow-up treatment for patients. Currently, cancer cells are found after almost every 10th operation on tumors in the head and neck area.
