A Light-Emitting Diode Laryngo-Stroboscope.

The stroboscope is a useful piece of equipment to help diagnose diseases of the vocal cords. However, the stroboscope with a xenon lamp light source is not small and requires a high voltage power supply. The laryngo-stroboscope is also heavy and expensive. As a solution to these problems, we constructed a laryngo-stroboscope with a light-emitting diode (LED) light source. This LED stroboscope is composed of a probe and a processor. The probe equipped with LEDs and a small CCD video camera is inserted into the pharynx via the mouth. As the red LED pulses synchronously with the vibration of the vocal cords, the stroboscopic vocal cord movement can be observed via the CCD video camera. The frequency of the LED pulses is manually controlled by a processor. In the non- stroboscopic mode, a white LED is used and color video laryngoscopy is possible. This system operates on dry batteries. The LED laryngo-stroboscope is simple, lightweight and less expensive than a xenon lamp stroboscope.