Multimodality optical coherence tomography based tethered capsule endomicroscopy for upper gastrointestinal tract imaging

We introduce two multimodal extensions of our optical coherence tomography (OCT) based tethered capsule endomicroscopy (TCE) platform, tailored towards an enhanced clinical applicability for upper gastrointestinal tract imaging. The first extension presented – white light (RGB)-OCT-based TCE – provides both, true-color visualization of the tissue surface and depth-resolved sub-surface OCT imaging, co-registered in time and space. The second extension presented – fluorescence (FL)-OCT-based TCE – enables the addition of tissue specific molecular contrast. We present compact, modular, easily portable, plug-and-play system designs for both extensions, as well as imaging results in swine esophagus, in vivo.