Voice coil based endomicroscopic optical coherence tomography probe for in vivo mucosa examination

We present an endomicroscopic OCT probe for in vivo examination of the mucosa in the nose based on a voice coil actuator. The side-viewing endoscope has a tip diameter of 3 mm and a usable length of 7 cm. A graded-index (GRIN) lens optics achieve a lateral resolution of 3 µm. At an actuator frequency between 40 Hz and 100 Hz the scanning range is up to 2 mm. A supercontinuum laser based mOCT system enables an axial resolution of 1 µm at a depth range of 700 µm. The postprocessing includes the linearization of the sinusoidal scan pattern and a registration of the time series from B-scans. The potential of the new design was demonstrated on ex-vivo mouse trachea. Essential morphological structures such as epithelium with ciliated cells, glands, blood and lymph vessels and also mucus transport were be visualized.