Reflectance confocal microscopy with a line scanning approach potentially offers a smaller, simpler and less expensive approach than traditional methods of point scanning for imaging in living tissues. With one moving mechanical element (galvanometric scanner), a linear array detector and off-the-shelf optics, we designed a compact (102x102x76mm) line scanning confocal reflectance microscope (LSCRM) for imaging human tissues in vivo in a clinical setting. Custom-designed electronics, based on field programmable gate array (FPGA) logic has been developed. With 405 nm illumination and a custom objective lens of numerical aperture 0.5, lateral resolution was measured to be 0.8 um (calculated 0.64 um). The calculated optical sectioning is 3.2 um. Preliminary imaging shows nuclear and cellular detail in human skin and oral epithelium in vivo. Blood flow is also visualized in the deeper connective tissue (lamina propria) in oral mucosa. Since a line is confocal only in one dimension (parallel) but not in the other, the detection is more sensitive to multiply scattered out of focus background noise than in the traditional point scanning configuration. Based on the results of our translational studies thus far, a simpler, smaller and lower-cost approach based on a LSCRM appears to be promising for clinical imaging.

Date Published: 9 February 2012
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 8207, Photonic Therapeutics and Diagnostics VIII, 82071V (9 February 2012); doi: 10.1117/12.908374

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8207:
Photonic Therapeutics and Diagnostics VIII
Anita Mahadevan-Jansen; Andreas Mandelis; Kenton W. Gregory M.D.; Nikiforos Kollias; Hyun Wook Kang; Henry Hirschberg M.D.; Melissa J. Suter; Brian Jet-Fei Wong M.D.; Justus F. Ilgner M.D.; Stephen Lam; Bodo E. Knudsen M.D.; Steen Madsen; E. Duco Jansen; Bernard Choi; Guillermo J. Tearney M.D.; Laura Marcu; Haishan Zeng; Matthew Brenner; Krzysztof Izdebski, Editor(s)