Design, calibration and validation of a novel surface imaging tool for medical endoscopic applications

OsteoArthritis is a debilitating disease throughout the developed world, causing significant loss of quality of life to individuals and damaging economies, the imaging system described in this paper has the potential to provide an objective means of measuring and reporting lesion dimensions and providing a machine readable data archive for future study. Existing imaging methodologies have been reviewed and contrasted and despite certain limitations the optical method proposed has the potential to address the issues highlighted to date. The preliminary depth measurement results with an accuracy of 200 μm±6% suggests a potential system for the objective reporting of tissue degradation. It is also envisaged that the bio tribological performance may be inferred from the tissue surface condition as image by the proposed system.