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The diagnosis of diseases from internal organs depends mainly on biopsy samples taken from affected areas. But collecting such samples is extremely prone to errors because of the inability of existing endoscopic imaging methods to accurately represent disease sites. Conventional optical elements of catheters used to access hard-to-reach areas of the body, such as the gastrointestinal tract and the pulmonary airways, are susceptible to aberrations that hinder the full capabilities of optical imaging.
Currently, Endoscopic Imaging Specialists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Flat Metal Technology Pioneers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), have come together to create a new class of endoscopic imaging catheters – called nano-optical endoscopes – that go beyond the limitations of existing systems.
The study is described in Nature Photonics.
The clinical adoption of many advanced endoscopic microscopy modalities have been hampered due to the difficulty of designing miniature catheters that achieve the same image quality as bulky desktop microscopes. The use of nano-optical catheters incorporating metallocysts will likely change the landscape of optical catheter design. in a dramatic increase in the quality, resolution and functionality of endoscopic microscopy. This will ultimately increase the clinical utility by allowing a more sophisticated evaluation of cellular and tissue microstructure in living patients.
Melissa Suter, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the MGH and Harvard Medical School (HMS)
a revolutionary new technology as the control of image distortions required for high imaging Resolution is simple compared to conventional optics, which requires multiple lenses of complex shape, "says Federico Capasso, Professor Robert L. Wallace of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Researcher in Electrical Engineering at SEAS and co-lead author of newspaper. " I am confident that this will lead to a new class of optical systems and instruments with a wide range of applications in many areas of science and technology.
" The versatility and design flexibility of the nano-optic endoscope greatly increases the capabilities of endoscopic imaging and will likely have an impact on the diagnostic imaging of organs internal, "said Hamid Pahlevaninezhad, medical instructor at the HGM and HMS and co-first author of the article." We have demonstrated an example of such capabilities for obtaining high-resolution imaging at a very wide depth of field. "
To show the quality of imaging of the nano-optic endoscope, scientists have devised and the respiratory tract of sheep and human lung tissue. They have demonstrated that the nano-optic endoscope can impregnate deep into the tissue with a significantly higher resolution than that of existing imaging catheters.
The images taken by the l? nano endoscope -optic clearly show cellular structures in the flesh of the fruit and tissues. glands in the bronchial mucosa of sheep and pigs. In human lung tissue, scientists were able to unambiguously identify structures that correspond to fine and irregular glands specifying the occurrence of adenocarcinoma, the most important type of lung cancer.
"Currently, we are at the mercy of We have materials that we have no control over to design high resolution lenses for imaging," said Yao-Wei Huang, Postdoctoral researcher at SEAS and co-first author of the paper "The main advantage of metals is that we can design and adapt its specifications to overcome spherical aberrations and astigmatism and obtain a very fine focus of the light. As a result, we obtain a very high resolution with an extended depth of field without the need for complex optical components. "
Subsequently, scientists are looking for other applications for the nano-optic endoscope, including a sensitive nano-optical endoscope, which could contrast between tissues that have structures. very organized, such as collagen, smooth muscle, and blood vessels
This article was co-authored by Mohammadreza Khorasaninejad, Vivien Ding, and Alexander Zhu, SEAS, Lida P. Hariri and David C. Adams, HGM Zhujun Shi, Harvard University, and Cheng-Wei Qiu, National University of Singapore
The study was funded in part by the National Institute of Health, the Office of Scientific Research of the Army of Air and LUNGevity Foundation / Lung Cancer Upstage
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