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If you have a "smart" mobile phone, then you have a digital camera in your pocket, backpack or purse. The camera sensor built into these phones provide high resolution images that are captured in a digital format readily displayed, saved and shared with others. This same technology is now being built into flexible scopes for inspecting the internal channels of medical devices. This approach to flexible scope design offers a number of advantages over traditional fiber optics.

First, and foremost, is an incredible improvement of the image quality. With fiber optics, as the number of glass fibers are reduced, the resolution or quality of the image is also reduced. In very small bundles, below 5mm in diameter, the image can be blurry. Conversely, with the use of modern digital camera technology, the optical imaging sensor is actually placed right at the tip of the scope, delivering a clear, well defined image.

Another issue often experienced with fiber optics, is their delicate nature. A fiber optic scope has thousands of individual strands of glass. These strands are very delicate and when flexed and bent, they easily break. Not so with modern digital camera technology. The only thing running through the shaft of these flexible inspection scopes are wires that relay the bits and bytes from the image sensor at the tip - and deliver the power to that image sensor as well as the LED light also located at the tip.

Power and lighting bring up another important advancement made possible by digital imaging technology - unlike with traditional fiber optic systems that require a separate light source and some kind of individually powered camera coupling mechanism - the digital imaging technology found in flexible inspection scopes, including the lighting, camera and image capturing system, are all powered by the USB port of a desktop or laptop computer.

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Exploring an Asteroid Without Leaving Earth

One building at JSC houses a spacecraft that will bring its 10th crew face-to-face with an asteroid on May 2. HERA – the Human Exploration Research Analog – is one of several analogs used by the Human Research Program to research ways to help NASA move from Lower Earth Orbit to deep space explorations.

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