A polarization-maintaining endoscope for surgical imaging
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Standard-of-care endoscopy is prone to image-quality degradation from specular reflections and surgical smoke as well as misdetection of lesions lacking color features, which diminish precision and pose risks for surgery. Integrating polarization-resolved imaging with endoscopy holds great promise to address these challenges, but conventional endoscopes have complex polarization properties that interfere with polarization-resolved imaging. Here, we demonstrate a polarization-maintaining endoscope (PME) that maintains the polarization state of the incident light under broadband illumination. The PME resolves the conflict between maintaining polarization and incorporating sapphire windows—an important element for ensuring clinical compatibility but polarization disruption. We show that using the PME can enhance surgical imaging in vivo by eliminating specular highlights in real time, enhancing the visibility of images affected by surgical smoke by a factor of 1.7, and improving the accuracy of polarimetric endoscopy 3-fold, aiding in the characterization of tissues beyond color for tumor detection.
Date Issued
2025-11-01
Date Acceptance
2025-07-04
Citation
Device, 2025, 3 (11)
ISSN
2666-9986
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Journal / Book Title
Device
Volume
3
Issue
11
Copyright Statement
© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
License URL
Identifier
10.1016/j.device.2025.100871
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
100871
Date Publish Online
2025-08-04