Design and optimization of a miniaturized imaging probe for simultaneous endomicroscopy and optical coherence tomography

A highly-integrated MEMS-based bimodal probe design with integrated piezoelectric fiber scanner for simultaneous endomicroscopy and optical coherence tomography (OCT) is presented. The two modalities rely on spectrally-separated optical paths that run partially in parallel through a micro-optical bench system, which has dimensions of only 13 x 2 x 3 mm(3) (1 x w x h). An integrated tubular piezoelectric fiber scanner is used to perform en face scanning required for three dimensional OCT measurements. This scanning engine has an outer diameter of 0.9 mm and a length of 9 mm, and features custom fabricated 10 pm thick polyimide flexible interconnect lines to address the four piezoelectric electrodes. As a platform combining a full-field and a scanning imaging modality, the developed probe design constitutes a blue print for a wide range of multi-modal endoscopic imaging probes.