Ensuring optical quality in reusable endoscopes

Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has become commonplace since technology advances in the 1990s, such as the introduction of video capabilities, which enabled surgeons to realise the potential of this approach.¹ Today MIS is known to help significantly reduce postoperative pain, improve patient recovery times and reduce patient length of hospital stay. It can also offer cost-savings for the NHS, when compared to more traditional surgical procedures.

Basically, there are two types of endoscope – rigid or flexible. Flexible endoscopes are most often used to examine the interior of organs, while rigid endoscopes generally provide better image quality for the same diameter in artificially created body cavities, which makes them the most suitable choice for use in MIS procedures.

A typical system for endoscopic surgery will consist of a bright light source, a light cable, endoscope, a camera, a video processor and a monitor. This makes them complex, expensive, and fragile devices that are routinely subjected to harsh conditions. The combination of sterilisation and ionising radiation to which they are subjected between every procedure, together with the mechanical forces that can be placed on them during surgery, can lead to degradation of the endoscope and can also result in a reduction in image quality. Despite visual checks on functionality during reprocessing, surgeons are still often confronted with suboptimal rigid endoscopes because it is difficult to assess degradation with the human eye.