Recovery of angular scattering profiles through a flexible multimode fiber

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Optics
• Cancer Diagnostics
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Endoscopic angle-resolved light scattering aids early cancer detection.
• Current methods often require complex multi-element fiber optic bundles.
• Single multimode fiber (MMF) approaches face practical limitations for clinical translation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an MMF-based endoscope for measuring angular scattering patterns.
• To address limitations of previous MMF scattering techniques for clinical application.
• To enable structure determination for early cancer detection.

Main Methods:

• Proposed an MMF-based endoscope utilizing spectrally resolved detection.
• Leveraged azimuthal symmetry of scattering patterns for robustness against fiber bending.
• Demonstrated measurements with a 1000 mm long, 200 µm core MMF.

Main Results:

• The MMF endoscope successfully recovered angular scattering distributions.
• Measurements remained accurate despite fiber bending displacements up to 30 cm.
• The method avoids complex matrix inversion or machine learning.

Conclusions:

• This MMF endoscope offers a robust and practical method for angular scattering measurements.
• The technique facilitates clinical translation of endoscopic diagnostics for early cancer detection.
• Accurate structure determination via scattering patterns can improve cancer diagnosis.