title: Ultra-thin and flexible endoscopy probe for optical coherence tomography based on stepwise transitional core fiber.
abstract: We present an ultra-thin fiber-body endoscopy probe for optical coherence tomography (OCT) which is based on a stepwise transitional core (STC) fiber. In a minimalistic design, our probe was made of spliced specialty fibers that could be directly used for beam probing optics without using a lens. In our probe, the OCT light delivered through a single-mode fiber was efficiently expanded to a large mode field of 24 μm diameter for a low beam divergence. The size of our probe was 85 μm in the probe's diameter while operated in a 160-μm thick protective tubing. Through theoretical and experimental analyses, our probe was found to exhibit various attractive features in terms of compactness, flexibility and reliability along with its excellent fabrication simplicity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Kookmin University, Seoul, 136-702, South Korea.
authors.forename: Jangbeom
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Center for Marine-Integrated Biomedical Technology, Pukyong National University, Busan, 608-737, South Korea.
authors.forename: Yugyeong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chae
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering and Center for Marine-Integrated Biomedical Technology, Pukyong National University, Busan, 608-737, South Korea.
authors.forename: Yeh-Chan
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Ahn
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Kookmin University, Seoul, 136-702, South Korea.
authors.forename: Sucbei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Moon
keywords: (060.2350) Fiber optics imaging; (110.4500) Optical coherence tomography; (170.2150) Endoscopic imaging; (170.3890) Medical optics instrumentation