Development of a Clinical-Grade OCT/OCT-Angiography Endomicroscope for Imaging in the Bladder

We discuss the design, manufacturing and performance of a clinical-grade endomicroscope for early detection of non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer through optical coherence tomography (OCT) and OCT- angiography. In order to avoid motion artifacts for the latter, the probe is designed to work in contact with tissue. Beam scanning is achieved by a fiber cantilever driven by a tubular piezoelectric actuator. The beam shaping elements are assembled at the tip of the scanning fiber to obtain a suitable resonance frequency and a large scanning angle within a compact design. The entire micro-optical system is encapsulated within a custom clinical-grade packaging. We demonstrate OCT imaging within a 2.3 mm diameter field-of-view at a transverse resolution of 15 µm.