In vivo endomicroscopy using three-dimensional optical coherence tomography and Fourier domain mode locked lasers

We report an endoscopic optical coherence tomography (OCT) system based on a Fourier Domain Mode Locked (FDML) laser, a novel data acquisition (DAQ) system with optical frequency clocking, and a high-speed spiralscanning fiber probe. The system is capable of acquiring three-dimensional (3D) in vivo datasets at 100,000 axial lines/s and 50 frames/s, enabled by the high sweep rates of the FDML laser and the efficient data processing of the DAQ system. This high imaging rate allows densely-sampled 3D datasets to be acquired, giving a resolvable feature size of 9 &mgr;m x 20 &mgr;m x 7 &mgr;m (transverse x longitudinal x axial, XYZ). In vivo 3D endomicroscopy is demonstrated in the rabbit colon, where individual colonic crypts are clearly visualized and measured. With further improvements in DAQ technology, the imaging speed will be scalable to the hundreds of thousands of axial lines/s supported by FDML lasers.