Single fiber ghost imaging for extreme minimally invasive medicine

Optical scattering media, such as blood, disturbs us to diagnose diseases inside deep blood vessels of our body. This is one of age-old problems on optics. To date, optical correlation allows us to image any objects hidden by scattering media. However, constrained by the scattering condition and weak illumination with thought of our body safety, even advanced fiber endoscopes are impossible to image the objects in meso-field of a few 10 mm. To overcome this problem, we demonstrate a lens-less single fiber ghost imaging for extreme minimally invasive medicine. Present imaging with a diameter of 105 µm achieved a spatial resolution of 0.05 mm in observing area of 9 mm 2 , image reconstruction under opaque scattering condition, and imaging at laser power density of 0.10 mW/cm 2 , as compared with a conventional neuroendoscope at that of 94 mW/cm 2 . Our strategy opens a new avenue for extreme minimally invasive endoscopic medicine.