On Wednesday, December 4th, Ivan Yeoh presented an overview of the research that he’s been doing on scanning fiber endosopes.

So if I was to ask you what is going on inside of you right now, what would you say? I suspect something along the lines of “I don’t know”. That’s too bad — there can be many good things and, gulp, bad things going on inside of you right now. Wouldn’t you like to have a look?

It turns out that if you were to go to a doctor and ask them to take a look inside of you, they’d use something called an Endoscope. Basically this is a pipe that they stick down your throat with some simple optics that allow them to see inside of you. This device has been around for quite a while and really has not changed that much.

This is where things start to get exciting. Big changes are coming. Ivan discussed a new type of device called a Scanning Fiber Endoscope that is in the process of being created. This is a new medical device and you can imagine all of the engineering challenges that are associated with trying to develop something like that. There are two things that will make this new breed of Endoscope revolutionary: it’s small size and it’s laser.

The small size is going to be created by the clever circuits that have been created to shrink the optics that this device houses. The laser will have two purposes. The first is to provide illumination of just exactly what is going on inside of you. The second is a bit more exciting: the laser will have the ability to provide spot treatment of anything that your doctor detects that he thinks should not be there. Doctors will benefit from this new device because it will allow them to have a forward view of their procedures (today’s Endoscopes only allow a side view).

The audience thoroughly enjoyed Ivan’s presentation.

A video of this presentation can be seen on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/N8BK-Kk55bI