Fiber-optic confocal microscope for biological imaging

Summary form only given. Recently confocal microscopy has been used to obtain real-time images of skin in vivo with sufficient contrast and resolution to measure nuclear and cytoplasmic diameters. This technique could be useful for detection of pathology in internal organs given a fiber-optic instrument with similar sensitivity and resolution. The principle difficulties associated with this are achieving the necessary resolution and rejecting the specular reflections produced at the fiber ends. Two approaches to this problem have been presented; in both a fiber-optic bundle is coupled to a confocal microscope. We have developed a prototype fiber-optic confocal microscope to image tissue with 5-/spl mu/m lateral resolution at 15 frames per sec in vivo; index matching reduces specular reflections. An existing confocal microscope was not required as the entire system was constructed with commercially available items.