A new optical coherence tomography system guided by active cannulas

Abstract

Purpose This paper presents a new OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography) system which is guided by Active Cannulas with its control platform. With the known advantages on OCT for its high speed and resolution spectral domain and a latest attracting active cannula system for its dexterous positioning controllability under millimeter scale surgery, an integration of both system are performed and tested in the first prototype setup. Methods The optical fiber having lens is installed on the cannula tip through the inner tube and the end-position are controlled to make line motions for scanning. For 3-D scanning on targeted area, radial motions are combined to reconstruct the scanned volume. Results For developing the integrated system to apply for real surgery, the positioning performance of the active cannula system are tested and implemented with calibration for processing the OCT images. Conclusion A new OCT system guided by active cannula is developed and tested experimentally in a prototype set up. Some representative OCT graphs are shown and the results verify that the integrated system will make reliable measuring performance on real surgery environment for practical implementation.