Dark-field illuminated reflectance fiber bundle endoscopic microscope.

We propose a reflectance fiber bundle microscope using a dark-field illumination configuration for applications in endoscopic medical imaging and diagnostics. Our experiment results show that dark-field illumination can effectively suppress strong specular reflection from the proximal end of the fiber bundle. We realized a lateral resolution of 4.4 μm using the dark-field illuminated fiber bundle configuration. To demonstrate the feasibility of using the system to study cell morphology, we obtained still and video images of two thyroid cancer cell lines. Our results clearly allow differentiation of different cancer cell types.