This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project is to develop a highly versatile fiber optics-based confocal system for biomedical applications. The proposed confocal fiber optics systems utilizes optical fiber technology to offer extreme compactness, multiple wavelength light excitation/detection (N X N coupling) minimal adjustment, and very low cost. One of the unique advantages of using optical fiber for confocal microscopy is that both the entrance and exit pinholes are, in fact, the endface of the core of an optical fiber, which guarantees that the system will always remain in alignment. During Phase I of the project, we designed and developed two laboratory optical configurations: one for retrofitting regular upright microscopes, and one for high density microarray scanners, we then successfully demonstrated the feasibility of these optical fiber confocal systems.
In Phase II, we will expand the fiber and wavelength multiplexity, maximize photon efficiency, optimize the confocal fiber optical module, develop a biochip-based confocal fiber probe array, and characterize and test the systems by performing bioassays. IOS's fiber optics-based will provide confocal microscopes with a capability that will significantly reduce the cost of the system, increase the versatility of the wavelength selection, and increase the popularity of using the confocal effect for many different important applications.
