Seeing or more general sensing with light can be one of the most accurate and precise ways to identify and analyze an object or the environment. In medicine, optical imaging in particular provides highly specific sensing tools to detect the most subtle changes in an organism’s structure, microstructure and metabolism.
The most simple form of optical imaging in medicine is simply looking at the patient for visual diagnosis. However, this also reveals the main problem of optics in medicine, which is the poor penetration of light into the human body, which is a couple of millimetres only. To solve this problem, we saw already 150 years ago the advent of the first endoscopes.
By now endoscopes are standard tools in medicine and find widespread applications throughout all disciplines. Most of these endoscopes are standard reflection imaging type endoscopes, meaning they provide a simple visual impression of the tissue, like if observed with the naked eye. However, modern optics, especially if using lasers, can provide many more imaging modalities and types of contrast. There is multiphoton imaging, hyperspectral imaging, Raman imaging, mid infrared vibrational imaging and many more. Today, hardly any of these advanced imaging devices can be found in endoscopes, even so they might be much more powerful to detect diseases earlier. This problem is addressed in ENCOMOLE-2i, where advanced endoscope based imaging systems are developed, which are capable of rapidly scanning large areas of tissue. To take full advantage of the wealth of information, these systems will provide an artificial intelligence based control unit to adaptively adjust the system.
We hope that these new advanced endoscopic systems will enable to detect the onset of disease earlier and more precisely. This will help to more efficiently treat diseases, because in many cases the earlier a pathologic condition is diagnosed the better are the chances for effective treatment. Maybe patients at risk can even be identified and diagnosed before the onset of disease symptoms. This can relate to early cancer diagnosis but also to other diseases like inflammatory disorders. Such a system can contribute to a more personalized and more individualized therapy for precision medicine.
Considering that optics in form of microscopes or endoscopes is used for all groups of major diseases, i.e. cardiovascular diseases, cancer and infectious diseases, the impact of advanced optical systems for in vivo imaging inside patients cannot be underestimated. Not only with respect to our ageing society the earlier diagnosis of disease and the improved management and treatment can contribute to a substantially decreased cost of health care but more importantly it may contribute to improved health and wellbeing of many millions of citizens.
