Optical catheter with rotary optical cap
AssigneeNational Research Council of Canada
InventorsShoude Chang, Erroll Murdock, Costel Flueraru, Youxin Mao
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Abstract
A scanning optical head for a catheter is locally controlled by a motor at an insertion end of the catheter uses a hollow motor through which a longitudinal optical path of the catheter passes. This permits the motor to be positioned between a control base of the catheter and avoids rotating the whole fibre, and therefore makes the beam scanning stable and accurate. In addition, because there is no coupling component, it also eliminates the light reflection between additional surfaces as well as varying fiber birefringence, which becomes a cause of noise when imaging the deep structure.
Claims6
A catheter comprising:
- an electromagnetic path passing longitudinally through a body of the catheter from a base end to an insertion end;
- and
- a motor encircling the longitudinal path at the control end surrounding the longitudinal path, the motor anchored to the catheter and having a rotor extending away from the control end, in a direction of the insertion end,
- the rotor coupled to an electromagnetic path element that caps the longitudinal path, to redirect a beam between the longitudinal path and a substantially radial direction, in at least one mode of operation.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.