Endoscope Holder Integrating Lens and Sensor
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing thinned vascular endoscope catheters face challenges in size reduction due to the addition of a chip holder, which increases the outer diameter at the front end, making it difficult to achieve a smaller diameter for easy insertion along a guide wire.
Innovation Solution
An endoscope design that integrates a lens and an image sensor at the front end with a guide wire hole, housed within a flexible tubular sheath, allowing for reduced diameter insertion while maintaining a conductive member for grounding and static protection.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a chip holder is inserted from the outside into an outer periphery of a sheath to protect the optical fiber bundle, then the sheath is protected, but the outer diameter of the front end portion increases, making size reduction difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The holder is integrated with the sheath by forming the holder from the sheath material itself through extrusion. This merging eliminates the need for a separate protective layer, as the holder and sheath become a unified structure where the holder portion is formed integrally with the sheath portion, thereby preventing diameter increase while maintaining protection.
Solution Approach 2:
The sheath material serves multiple functions: it provides the protective sheath function and simultaneously forms the holder structure. The holder portion of the sheath performs both the protective function and the guiding function for the optical fiber bundle, eliminating the need for additional separate components.
2Reliability
If a holder covering the lens and image sensor is added, then the imaging components are protected and positioned, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The holder is formed integrally with the sheath through extrusion, creating a unified structure. This merging reduces the number of separate components and assembly steps, thereby reducing device complexity while still providing protection and positioning for the lens and image sensor.
Solution Approach 2:
The sheath material serves multiple functions: it provides the protective sheath function, forms the holder structure, and provides positioning features for the imaging components. This multi-functionality reduces the need for additional specialized components, simplifying the overall device structure.
Data Source
AI summary
A front end of an endoscope includes both a lens and an image sensor. There is provided a guide wire hole. The endoscope is easily inserted along a guide wire while a diameter is reduced in the front end in an insertion direction. The endoscope includes a lens which is disposed in the front end in the insertion direction, and receives incident imaging light, an image sensor disposed in a rear portion of the lens, and on which an image of the imaging light is formed, a holder which covers the lens and the image sensor, and having the guide wire hole through which the guide wire penetrates, and a flexible tubular sheath connected to a rear end portion of the holder, and into which a cable conductively connected to the image sensor is inserted.