Coming Soon: Disposable Endoscopes Featuring the World's Tiniest Cameras
Tiny Endoscope Fraunhofer Labs A new type of endoscope with a super-small camera on its end could yield cheap, disposable scopes for peering inside your body. The camera is about the size of a grain of kosher salt, and its designers say it's the smallest camera ever. Endoscopy involves inserting a cable with a camera lens on it through your body's natural openings or through small incisions, so doctors can check out internal organs, examine injuries or perform surgery. But endoscopes are complex to produce, requiring complex silicon wafer etching, which means they're expensive. They also must be carefully sanitized with each use, which is time-consuming. The new model, designed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration in Berlin, is so cheap that it could be tossed out with the doctor's latex gloves. It's possible with a new fabrication method that simplifies the wiring of the image sensors,...