Spectrally encoded miniature endoscopy

Summary form only given. Many diagnostic imaging applications, including fetoscopy, mammary ductoscopy, and angioscopy, require minimization of endoscope diameters. Currently, the low number of resolvable points that are provided by small diameter (<0.5 mm) endoscopes limits the clinical uses of these devices. Since optical fibers are of finite diameter, only a limited number of fibers can be incorporated into one imaging bundle. For example, for a 0.5 mm diameter fiber optic imaging bundle with individual fiber diameters of 5 /spl mu/m, the total number of resolvable points is 8000. We describe an imaging device that uses spectral encoding to obtain real-time images. Miniature endoscopes based on this technique have the potential to increase the resolution by a factor of more than 20 over fiber-optic imaging bundles of the same diameter.