Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

In recent years, various optical microscopy techniques have been developed for non-destructive imaging of biological tissues, including optical coherence tomography, reflectance-mode confocal microscopy, fluorescence-mode confocal microscopy, and multiphoton excitation microscopy. Each imaging modality has its own advantages and disadvantages. Previously, confocal microscopy has shown progress in skin cancer imaging and demonstrated potential in other cancer diagnosis. However, moving confocal imaging modalities into endoscopy applications is challenging in that miniaturized catheter probes have to be developed to pass through the endoscope instrument channel that is a few millimeter diameter in size. In this research, we aim to use MEMES (Microelectromechanical Systems) technology to make a miniature confocal optical probe that will produce histology-like cross sectional images and 3D images of tissue in vivo for GI (gastrointestinal) cancer diagnosis.