Nano-optic endoscopes with metalenses
Improvement in the accuracy of endoscopic biopsy for small peripheral lesions is necessary if bronchoscopy will play a major role in lung cancer diagnosis. Endoscopic optical coherence tomography (OCT) with commercial catheters that rely on graded-index (GRIN) lenses or ball lenses, however, exhibit strong astigmatism and spherical aberration and thus deviate from diffraction-limited focusing. Shown is an artistic impression of the nano-optic endoscope that uses a metalens, with the ability to modify the phase of incident light at subwavelength level, to enable high-resolution endoscopic imaging at extended depth-of-focus by avoiding monochromatic aberrations. High-resolution three-dimensional images are captured by inserting the nano-optic endoscope into the lungs endobronchial visualize airway tissue microstructures. The combination of the superior resolution and higher imaging depth of focus of the nano-optic endoscope is likely to increase the clinical utility of endoscopic optical imaging.
The technology can be adapted to intraarterial endoscopy, intracranial endoscopy and many other specialties.
The cost and time saved for manufacturing many medical devices such as operating microscopes, histopathology scopes, and any other magnifying devices will be enormous. Grinding classical lenses takes large amounts of time and difficulty reproducing exact copies, while silicon chips can be made in large volumes using instantaneous chip design and manufacturing. The technology now in use by various silicon chip manufacturers such as Intel, AMD, Apple and NVIDIA would be repurposed to accomplish this with great saving in time and capital.
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