A Side-Viewing Endoscopic Probe With Distal Micro Rotary Scanner for Multimodal Luminal Imaging and Analysis

This paper reports a novel micro electromagnetic actuator serving as the distal rotary scanner of an endoscopic probe developed for side-viewing luminal tissue screening and analysis enabled through different endoscopic modalities. The micro rotary optical scanner, for the first time, offers stepwise, low-speed, and high-speed rotational motions to be compatible with endoscopic optical coherence tomography (OCT) and Raman spectroscopy. In comparison with preceding designs, this rotary scanner is shown to provide up to 125× higher revolution speeds per power via a ~50% narrower body while limiting its operation temperature within a biologically safe level for in-vivo scanning purposes. A preliminary experiment on human skin tissues is performed using the prototyped side-viewing OCT endoscopic probe equipped with the developed distal scanner. The results demonstrate the probe's ability for real-time 360° imaging of live tissue with both high speed and high resolution. These results pave the path for further testing on human internal lumens.