Design of high resolution panoramic endoscope imaging system based on freeform surface

This paper introduces a novel endoscope design based on the panoramic annular staring imaging technology. This design utilizes a single optical system to realize both panoramic observation and local high resolution on a single sensor. The freeform surface is employed to improve the image quality and reduce system volume. The design results based on the commercial optical design software package ZEMAX, indicate that this optical system is able to acquire an excellent image quality with a modulation transfer function above 0.6. Compared with the traditional ones, this novel endoscope design with wide FOV is likely to decrease the diagnostic time dramatically and improve the lesion detect rate considerably.