Fig. 4.

Comparison of the fiber endoscopic imaging modality vs a conventional optical system of the same numerical aperture and estimation of resolution limit. (a) Widefield 0.5NA microscope objective image and (d) Image acquired with the multimode fiber. Comparison of the imaging capability of the system against a conventional optical system of similar NA. The information conveyed by the lensless multimode fiber endoscope is directly comparable to that given by the 0.5 NA microscope objective. The comparison of the cross sectional plots (b),(e) and (c),(f) verifies the conclusion. Fig. 3(g) and (h) are used to estimate the resolution of the system. In Fig. 3(g) the bead sample is imaged with a 0.65 NA objective to get a more detailed view. The scanning scheme (with a pixel pitch of 0.5μm) gives an image where two beads almost fused into each other can be still be separated, therefore placing the resolution limit of the system in the submicron range. Scale bars in all images are 10μm.