Now you can film your insides with the help of a tiny camera! Researchers at the University of Stuttgart have developed a 3D-printed, three-lens camera that is just 100 micrometers (0.004 inches) across, which can be injected into your body via a syringe. It is well suited for endoscopy and situations where we want to observe a patient's body from the inside.
It was made using something called a "femtosecond direct laser writing system," which is no bigger than a grain of salt, on the end of a fiber optic cable the width of two human hairs.
"Endoscopic applications will enable non-invasive and non-destructive examination of small objects in medicine, as well as the industrial sector," the authors wrote in their research.
They stated: “The unprecedented flexibility of our method paves the way for printed miniature optical instruments, such as endoscopes, systems for cell biology, novel lighting systems, miniature fiber optic traps, integrated quantum emitters and detectors, tiny drones, and robots with autonomous vision.”
The researchers say that during testing it produced “high visual performance and was very compact.”
Once placed inside the body, the camera can focus on images from a distance of 3.0 mm and relay them via a 1.7-meter (5.6-foot) fiber-optic cable to which it is attached. The “imaging system” fits snugly inside a syringe needle, allowing it to be placed on a human organ or even the brain, according to the team.
What's remarkable about the tiny camera is that it takes very little effort to make these lenses. The researchers say they designed, built, and tested the tiny camera in just a few hours.
The process is described in the journal Nature Photonics.
