Bioimaging has advanced the field of nanomedicine, drug delivery, and tissue engineering by directly visualizing the dynamic mechanism of diagnostic agents or therapeutic drugs in the body. In particular, wide-field, planar, near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence imaging has the potential to revolutionize human surgery by providing real-time image guidance to surgeons for target tissues to be resected and vital tissues to be preserved. In this review, we introduce the principles of NIR fluorescence imaging and analyze currently available NIR fluorescence imaging systems with special focus on optical source and packaging. We also introduce the evolution of the FLARE intraoperative imaging technology as an example for image-guided surgery.
Abstract. We propose an integrated structure that combines chip and fiber array blocks for optical interconnection with a polymeric planar lightwave circuit (PLC) device using the roll-to-roll imprint process. The fiber array blocks and PLC chip of the integrated structure are fabricated on the same substrate, and the alignments in the three spatial directions were established with the insertion of an optical fiber. The characteristics of the integrated structure were evaluated by fabricating a 1 × 2 optical splitter device. The structure had an insertion loss of 3.9 dB, and the optical uniformity of the channel was 0.1 dB, indicating that the same performance for an active alignment can be expected.
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