Endoscopic biopsies play a vital role in the diagnosis of many diseases of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The standard means of biopsy capture using forceps presents challenges in obtaining adequate tissue samples, especially for unsedated transnasal endoscopy (uTNE). Cryobiopsy is an emerging minimally-invasive alternative where the distal tip of a dual-lumen uTNE probe is cooled momentarily, freezing and adhering the tissue in contact, which is collected for histology. OCT image guidance during cryobiopsy can enable pre-biopsy lesion examination; however, dimensional constraints make this challenging. Here, we demonstrate a microscale 3D-printed device capable of minimally-invasive side-viewing OCT image-guided cryobiopsy though uTNE scopes.
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