Endoscope imaging has become a hot topic in recent years due to the demand for exploration in medical and industrial fields. The FPGA plays a crucial role in endoscopic image processing. While dedicated ASICs cannot accommodate more functions and algorithms, FPGAs can!
The Development of Endoscopes
The development of endoscopes mainly involves the following aspects:
These challenges pose significant obstacles for sensor manufacturers, structural manufacturers, algorithm engineers, and application engineers. Where there are challenges, there is a market; where there is a market, there is competition. As a result, although the prices of endoscopes have decreased significantly in recent years, and some demands have been continuously met, there are still many technologies that need iteration and markets that need expansion.
Therefore, endoscopes have a wide range of applications in both medical and industrial fields, making them worthy of our research today.
Classification of Endoscopes
Endoscopes can mainly be divided into rigid endoscopes and flexible endoscopes. The physical images are shown below:
[Structural Comparison]:
1) Flexible Endoscope: The black device in the image has a soft body that can bend, and the head can rotate.
2) Rigid Endoscope: The silver device in the image has a rigid body that cannot bend.
[Depth Comparison]
[Sensor Comparison]
1) Flexible Endoscope: The sensor is located at the front, with resolution affected by size and distance factors, usually smaller.
2) Rigid Endoscope: The sensor is located at the back, with a short and relatively thick size, allowing for higher resolution.
[Usage Comparison]
1) Flexible Endoscope: Mainly used for examinations, diagnoses, and treatments through natural cavities in the body, such as gastroscopes, colonoscopes, laryngoscopes, and bronchoscopy, entering through the digestive tract, respiratory tract, and urinary tract.
2) Rigid Endoscope: Mainly used to enter sterile tissues, organs, or sterile cavities through surgical incisions, such as laparoscopes, thoracoscopes, arthroscopes, intervertebral disc endoscopes, and ventriculoscopy, with shallower depth.
Comparative Analysis
Flexible endoscopes are more challenging to use and have broader applications, thus offering more potential for technological improvement. Therefore, we will primarily study the FPGA solutions for flexible endoscopes.
The Chinese market for flexible endoscopes is mainly dominated by three Japanese giants: Olympus, Fujifilm, and Pentax, with a market share exceeding 95%. In recent years, with continuous technological advancements, domestic companies like Kaidi Medical and Auhua have gradually achieved technological breakthroughs, breaking the monopoly. Domestic flexible endoscopes currently only account for 5% of the market share, so we still have significant room for improvement, not only in optics and structure but also in image algorithms.
PS: The data may be delayed, but the overall trend remains unchanged.
Structure of Flexible Endoscope
Flexible endoscopes consist of image sensors, optical lenses, light sources, and mechanical devices, allowing entry into the stomach through the mouth or other natural openings, enabling direct observation of changes in relevant areas. This significantly enhances the safety of surgeries by allowing doctors to conduct more comprehensive examinations of internal conditions under visual guidance.
Next, we will primarily study the FPGA solutions for flexible endoscopes, starting with a block diagram as shown below:
Here, we customized a 1-meter long OV6946 flexible endoscope module, planning to integrate the decoding chip OV426 and FPGA + cache onto one board, supporting onboard HDMI display or local RGB LCD display. The OV6946 module integrates two LED lights and outputs analog signals, as shown in the physical image below:
(Considering whether to launch an endoscope FPGA development kit…..)
Additionally, the parameters of the OV6946 sensor are as follows.
The specific implementation of the FPGA demo will be discussed in future articles. We will continue to use FPGA to start our ISP journey and exhaust the last straw of endoscopy!
As promised, I have been diligently writing about ISP image processing knowledge on the Knowledge Planet, having already produced four articles. I hope the content I wish to write is unique and not plagiarized.
The Knowledge Planet will continue to be updated, and we are about to move on to the camera acquisition section.
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