Coherent Raman scattering microscopy is a fast, label-free, and chemically specific imaging technique that shows high potential for future in vivo optical histology. However, the imaging depth in tissues is limited to the sub-millimeter range because of absorption and scattering. Realization of coherent Raman imaging using a fiber endoscope system is a crucial step towards imaging deep inside living tissues and providing information that is inaccessible with current microscopy tools. Until now, the development of coherent Raman endoscopy has been hampered by several issues, mainly related to the fiber delivery of the excitation pulses and signal collection. Here, we present a flexible, compact, coherent Raman, and multimodal nonlinear endoscope (4.2 mm outer diameter, 71 mm rigid length) based on a resonantly scanned hollow-core Kagomé-lattice double-clad fiber. The fiber design enables distortion-less, background-free delivery of femtosecond excitation pulses and back-collection of nonlinear signals through the same fiber. Sub-micrometer spatial resolution over a large field of view is obtained by combination of a miniature objective lens with a silica microsphere lens inserted into the fiber core. We demonstrate high-resolution, high-contrast coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering, and second harmonic generation endoscopic imaging of biological tissues over a field of view of 320 µm at a rate of 0.8 frames per second. These results pave the way for intraoperative label-free imaging applied to real-time histopathology diagnosis and surgery guidance.

We investigate lensless endoscopy using coherent beam combining and aperiodic multicore fibers (MCF). We show that diffracted orders, inherent to MCF with periodically arranged cores, dramatically reduce the field of view (FoV) and that randomness in MCF core positions can increase the FoV up to the diffraction limit set by a single fiber core, while maintaining MCF experimental feasibility. We demonstrate experimentally pixelation-free lensless endoscopy imaging over a 120 micron FoV with an aperiodic MCF designed with widely spaced cores. We show that this system is suitable to perform beam scanning imaging by simply applying a tilt to the proximal

Abstract. We take stock of the progress that has been made into developing ultrathin endoscopes assisted by wave front shaping. We focus our review on multicore fiber-based lensless endoscopes intended for multiphoton imaging applications. We put the work into perspective by comparing with alternative approaches and by outlining the challenges that lie ahead.