Cable-driven flexible endoscope utilizing diamond-shaped perforations: FlexDiamond

Abstract Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a type of cancer that originates in the nasopharynx, the area that is in the upper part of the throat. Surveillance of NPC is traditionally physician-operated, and our aim is an automatic NPC surveillance prototype capable of inserting a camera via the nasopharyngeal airway. A flexible manipulator is used to generate bending, which allows access to the target region. We adopted diamond-shaped perforations on the manipulator to improve the bending function. This chapter will firstly focus on analyzing the existing endoscopes to review their strengths and weaknesses. FlexDiamond aims to provide an infection-free and automatic method of detecting NPC. We report the key performance indicators, the step-by-step procedures for the operation of the prototype, and the comparison with these existing prototypes.