Tissue Scanning apparatus and method
AssigneePrinceton Lightwave, Inc.
InventorGary Carver
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system for multispectral confocal mapping of a tissue, comprising: a light source; an optical fiber having an aperture providing a confocal pinhole, a scanner being free-space coupled to said aperture and operative to scan the tissue and provide intensity signals for each of a plurality of points therein; a switch or modulator operative to convert input signals to optical pulses; a reflector that receives the optical pulses and provides a temporal sequence of wavelength selective reflections; and, a detector optically coupled to receive the temporal sequence of wavelength selective reflections.
Claims32
A system for multispectral confocal mapping of a tissue, comprising:
- a light source providing emissions;
- an optical fiber having a first end optically coupled to receive the emissions and a second end having an aperture providing a confocal pinhole,
- a scanner being free-space coupled to said aperture, said scanner operative to scan the tissue and provide intensity signals for each of a plurality of points therein, wherein said optical fiber receives the intensity signals at said aperture and propagates said intensity signals to said first end;
- a switch or modulator optically coupled to said first end of said optical fiber and operative to convert said intensity signals to optical pulses;
- a reflector optically coupled to receive the optical pulses and provide a temporal sequence of wavelength selective reflections of the optical pulses;
- and,
- a detector optically coupled to receive the temporal sequence of wavelength selective reflections and provide an output suitable for populating a data cube indicative of the relative intensity of each point in the scanned tissue.
The system of claim 23, wherein said reflector comprises a single chirped grating.
A system for multispectral confocal mapping of a tissue, comprising:
- a light source providing a series of broad spectrum emission pulses;
- a plurality of reflectors optically coupled to receive the series of optical pulses and provide a temporal sequence of wavelength selective reflections of each of the optical pulses;
- an optical fiber having a first end optically coupled to receive the temporal sequence of wavelength selective reflections and a second end having an aperture providing a confocal pinhole,
- a scanner being free-space coupled to said aperture, said scanner operative to scan the tissue and provide intensity signals for each of a plurality of points therein, wherein said optical fiber receives the intensity signals at said aperture and propagates said intensity signals to said first end;
- and,
- a detector optically coupled to receive the intensity signals and provide an output suitable for populating a data cube indicative of the relative intensity of each point in the scanned tissue.
A method for mapping a tissue, comprising:
- scanning portions of the tissue, and for each portion:
- coupling intensity signals from the then scanned portion of the tissue into an end of an optical fiber providing a confocal pinhole,
- converting said intensity signals to optical pulses;
- obtaining a temporal sequence of wavelength selective reflections of the optical pulses;
- and,
- providing an output indicative of a relative intensity responsively to the temporal sequence of wavelength selective reflections.
A method for mapping tissue, comprising:
- providing a temporal series of optical pulses;
- providing a temporal sequence of wavelength selective reflections of each of the optical pulses;
- impinging portions of the tissue with a corresponding one of the temporal sequence of wavelength selective reflections;
- detecting light returned from each portion responsive to the impinging step;
- and
- providing, in response to said detecting step, an output indicative of a relative intensity for each said portion of the tissue.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.