Real-time microscopic imaging of esophageal epithelial disease with autofluorescence under ultraviolet excitation

Detection of esophageal disease in current clinical practice is limited to visualization of macroscopic epithelial morphology. In this work, we investigate high resolution autofluorescence imaging under ultra violet excitation to visualize microscopic epithelial changes related to disease progression using a bench top prototype microscope. The approach is based on the hypothesis that UV excitation light can only penetrate the superficial layer of cells resulting in autofluorescence images of the epithelial layer without using an additional image sectioning approach. The experiments were performed using ex vivo human esophagus biopsy specimens. The results indicate that cellular morphology information related to disease progression is attainable without tissue preparation.