The major objective of this effort is to develop the capability of producing a bright, very flexible, disposable, low-cost plastic image guide for endoscopy. The result of the Phase I project was to demonstrate we could produce plastic image guide with the necessary specifications. The proposed research plan is to develop the most cost effective, reliable method of producing a basic image guide. A practical endoscope of any desired diameter, will be composed of an array of he basic image guide units. We have adopted a production method for the basic unit which will yield video quality, plastic, disposable endoscopes whose cost of manufacture will be substantially less than a glass endoscope. This should permit a major penetration into the multi million dollar annual flexible endoscope market, which is presently dominated at the 93% level by the three Japanese manufacturers, Olympus, Pentax, and Fujinon. Development of this technology will allow the US to be a potentially dominant supplier of high quality, low cost image guide for a variety of medical and industrial applications in the global market.
