Coherent narrow-band light source for miniature endoscopes

Chen, Zhan-Yu and Gogoi, Ankur and Lee, Shao-Yu and Tsai-Lin, Yuan and Yi, Po-Wei and Lu, Ming-Kuan and Hsieh, Chih-Cheng and Ren, Jinchang and Marshall, Stephen and kao, Fu-Jen (2019) Coherent narrow-band light source for miniature endoscopes. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 25 (1). 7100707. ISSN 1077-260X (https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTQE.2018.2836959)

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Abstract

In this work, we report the successful implementation of a coherent narrow-band light source for miniature endoscopy applications. An RGB laser module that provides much higher luminosity than traditional incoherent white light sources is used for illumination, taking advantages of the laser light's high spatial coherence for efficient light coupling. Notably, the narrow spectral band of the laser light sources also enables spectrally resolved imaging, to distinguish certain biological tissues or components. A monochrome CMOS camera is employed to synchronize with the time lapsed RGB laser module illumination for color image acquisition and reconstruction, which provides better spatial resolution than a color CMOS camera of comparable pixel number, in addition to spectral resolving.