Tang Yubo, Kortum Alex, Parra Sonia G, Vohra Imran, Milbourne Andrea, Ramalingam Preetha, Toscano Paul A, Schmeler Kathleen M, Richards-Kortum Rebecca R
Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston, TX 77005, USA.
The authors contributed equally to this work.
Biomed Opt Express. 2019 Dec 16;11(1):269-280. doi: 10.1364/BOE.381064. eCollection 2020 Jan 1.
Cervical cancer incidence and mortality rates remain high in medically underserved areas. In this study, we present a low-cost (<$5,000), portable and user-friendly confocal microendoscope, and we report on its clinical use to image precancerous lesions in the cervix. The confocal microendoscope employs digital apertures on a digital light projector and a CMOS sensor to implement line-scanning confocal imaging. Leveraging its versatile programmability, we describe an automated aperture alignment algorithm to ensure clinical ease-of-use and to facilitate technology dissemination in low-resource settings. Imaging performance is then evaluated in and pilot studies; results demonstrate that the confocal microendoscope can enhance visualization of nuclear morphology, contributing to significantly improved recognition of clinically important features for detection of cervical precancer.
在医疗服务不足的地区，宫颈癌的发病率和死亡率仍然很高。在本研究中，我们展示了一种低成本（<5000美元）、便携式且用户友好的共聚焦微型内窥镜，并报告了其在宫颈癌前病变成像中的临床应用。该共聚焦微型内窥镜在数字光投影仪和CMOS传感器上采用数字孔径来实现线扫描共聚焦成像。利用其通用的可编程性，我们描述了一种自动孔径对准算法，以确保临床易用性，并促进在资源匮乏地区的技术传播。然后在两项试点研究中评估成像性能；结果表明，共聚焦微型内窥镜可以增强细胞核形态的可视化，有助于显著提高对宫颈癌前病变检测中临床重要特征的识别。
