Towards an ultra-thin medical endoscope: multimode fibre as a wide-field image transferring medium

Multimode optical fibres are attractive for biomedical and industrial applications such as endoscopes because of the small cross section and imaging resolution they can provide in comparison to widely-used fibre bundles. However, the image is randomly scrambled by propagation through a multimode fibre. Even though the scrambling is unpredictable, it is deterministic, and therefore the scrambling can be reversed. To unscramble the image, we treat the multimode fibre as a linear, disordered scattering medium. To calibrate, we scan a focused beam of coherent light over thousands of different beam positions at the distal end and record complex fields at the proximal end of the fibre. This way, the inputoutput response of the system is determined, which then allows computational reconstruction of reflection-mode images. However, there remains the problem of illuminating the tissue via the fibre while avoiding back reflections from the proximal face. To avoid this drawback, we provide here the first preliminary confirmation that an image can be transferred through a 2x2 fibre coupler, with the sample at its distal port interrogated in reflection. Light is injected into one port for illumination and then collected from a second port for imaging.