Hybrid confocal Raman endomicroscopy for morpho-chemical tissue characterization

Confocal laser endomicroscopy (CLE) offers imaging of tissue microarchitecture and has emerged as a promising tool for in vivo clinical diagnosis of cancer across many organs. CLE, however, can show high inter-observer dependency and does not provide information about tissue molecular composition. In contrast, Raman spectroscopy is a label-free optical technique that provides detailed biomolecular compositional information but offers limited or no morphological information. Here we present a novel hybrid fiber-optic confocal Raman endomicroscopy system for morpho-chemical tissue imaging and analysis. The developed confocal endomicroscopy system is based on a novel detection scheme for rejecting Raman silica fiber interference permitting simultaneous CLE imaging and Raman spectral acquisition of tissues through a coherent fiber bundle. We show that this technique enables real-time microscopic visualization of tissue architecture as well as simultaneous pointwise label-free biomolecular characterization and fingerprinting of tissue paving the way for multimodal diagnostics at endoscopy.