Fluidic lens laparoscopic zoom camera for minimally invasive surgery.

This work reports a miniaturized laparoscopic zoom camera that can significantly improve vision for minimally invasive surgery (MIS), also known as laparoscopic surgery. The laparoscopic zoom camera contains bioinspired fluidic lenses that can change curvature and focal length in a manner similar to the crystalline lenses in human eyes. The traditional laparoscope is long, rigid, and made of fixed glass lenses with a fixed field of view. The constricted vision of a laparoscope is often an inconvenience and plays a role in many surgical injuries. To further advance MIS technology, we developed a new type of laparoscopic camera that has a total length of less than 17 mm, greater than 4x optical zoom, and 100 times higher sensitivity than today's laparoscope allowing it to work under illumination as low as 300 lux. All these unique features are enabled by the technology of bioinspired fluidic lenses having a dynamic range over 100 diopters and being convertible between a convex and concave shape.