Study on Test Methods for Main Optical Characteristics of Medical Endoscopes

Medical endoscopes are now widely used in clinical and have been playing an important role in minimally invasive surgery (MIS), so there is an increasing need to accurately evaluate the performance characteristics of endoscopes, especially the optical characteristics. Studies have been carried out to test their performances by using different methods internationally. But there are few practical studies in China. In this paper, a test system is designed to evaluate the optical performance characteristics of an endoscope, which mainly include the optical resolution, distortion, modulation transfer function (MTF) and field of view (FOV). The test system block diagram is given. Each part of the test system and each characteristic test method are described and analyzed in details. However, the test equipment is still being fixed and debugged, so further experimental research will be carried out later.