Optical microscopy and spectroscopy for imaging airway epithelial functions

Abstract

Cystic Fibrosis and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease are two of the most deadly diseases in the world that are incurable. However, early detection of the diseases can lead to the prolonging of the patient’s life. Therefore, this Final Year Project report focuses on visualizing airway epithelial functions using Spectroscopic Optical Coherence Tomography (SOCT). There are three sections of this project of which the first is to simulate the results for experiments conducted on rabbit trachea tissues using SOCT microscope using a design simulation software, OptiFDTD. The upward trend obtained during simulation resulted in understanding that most scattering occurs on laser wavelength of 1050nm using dark field microscopy and thus is able to produce colour at all angles. The second section is the processing of post-experimental data using Matlab to generate a coloured and greyscale cross-sectional image of the rabbit trachea to enable easy visualization of the cilia. The third section is the improvement of the current SOCT setup by choosing a more appropriate lens than the one currently used. Three lenses were compared based on their Point Spread Function and Chromatic Aberration values using Zemax and the best lens is recommended to her supervisor.