Imaging optics for low-loss high-resolution silica image fiber

Recently, a long low-loss silica image fiber was developed by a new fabrication technology. A large number of pixel fibers, corresponding to the pixels of the final product, are bundled, collapsed by heating, and drawn into an image fiber unit, which is a single rather thick image-guiding glass fiber with multiple discrete pixels. Although an image fiber with ~104 pixels, which is comparable with conventional fiber endoscopes, has already been produced by this new fabrication technology, increasing the number of pixels—more than 105—is required to develop.