The health of rich, developed nations has seen drastic improvement
in the last two centuries. For it to continue improving at a similar
rate new or improved diagnostic and treatment technologies are required,
especially for those diseases such as cancer which are forecast
to constitute the majority of disease burden in the future. Optical
techniques such as microscopy have long played their part in the diagnostic
process. However there are several new biophotonic modalities
that aim to exploit various interactions between light and tissue to provide
enhanced diagnostic information. Many of these show promise in
a laboratory setting but few have progressed to a clinical setting. We
have designed and constructed a
flexible, multi-modal, multi-spectral
laparoscopic imaging system that could be used to demonstrate several
different techniques in a clinical setting.
The core of this system is a dynamic hyperspectral illumination system
based around a supercontinuum laser and Digital Micromirror
Device that can provide specified excitation light in the visible and
near infra-red ranges. This is a powerful tool for spectroscopic techniques
as it is not limited to interrogating a fixed range of wavelengths
and can switch between excitation bands instantaneously. The excitation
spectra can be customised to match particular
fluorophores or
absorption features, introducing new possibilities for spectral imaging.
A standard 10 mm diameter rigid endoscope was incorporated into
the system to reduce cost and demonstrate compatibility with existing
equipment. The polarization properties of two commercial endoscopes
were characterised and found to be unsuited to current polarization
imaging techniques as birefringent materials used in their construction introduce complex, spatially dependent transformations of the polarization
state. Preliminary exemplar data from phantoms and ex vivo
tissue was collected and the feasibility and accuracy of different analysis
techniques demonstrated including multiple class classification algorithms.
Finally, a novel visualisation method was implemented in
order to display the complex hyperspectral data sets in a meaningful
and intuitive way to the user
