Endoscope

An endoscope is an inspection instrument composed of image sensor, optical lens, light source and mechanical device, which is used to look deep into the body by way of openings such as the mouth or anus. A typical endoscope applies several modern technologies including optics, ergonomics, precision mechanics, electronics, and software engineering. With an endoscope, it is possible to observe lesions that cannot be detected by X-ray, making it useful in medical diagnosis. An endoscope uses tubes only a few millimeters thick to transfer illumination in one direction and high-resolution video in the other, allowing minimally invasive surgeries. It is used to examine the internal organs like the throat or esophagus. Specialized instruments are named after their target organ. Examples include the cystoscope (bladder), nephroscope (kidney), bronchoscope (bronchus), arthroscope (joints) and colonoscope (colon), and laparoscope (abdomen or pelvis). They can be used to examine visually and diagnose, or assist in surgery such as an arthroscopy.

"Endo-" is a scientific Latin prefix derived from Ancient Greek ἐνδο- (endo-) meaning "within", and "-scope" comes from the modern Latin "-scopium", from the Greek σκοπεῖν (skopein) meaning to "look at" or "to examine".

The first endoscope was developed in 1806 by German physician Philipp Bozzini with his introduction of a "Lichtleiter" (light conductor) "for the examinations of the canals and cavities of the human body". However, the College of Physicians in Vienna disapproved of such curiosity. The first effective open-tube endoscope was developed by French physician Antonin Jean Desormeaux. He was also the first one to use an endoscope in a successful operation.

After the invention of Thomas Edison, the use of electric light was a major step in the improvement of endoscope. The first such lights were external although sufficiently capable of illumination to allow cystoscopy, hysteroscopy and sigmoidoscopy as well as examination of the nasal (and later thoracic) cavities as was being performed routinely in human patients by Sir Francis Cruise (using his own commercially available endoscope) by 1865 in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Dublin, Ireland. Later, smaller bulbs became available making internal light possible, for instance in a hysteroscope by Charles David in 1908.

Hans Christian Jacobaeus has been given credit for the first large published series of endoscopic explorations of the abdomen and the thorax with laparoscope (1912) and thoracoscope (1910) although the first reported thoracoscopic examination in a human was also by Cruise.

Laparoscope was used in the diagnosis of liver and gallbladder disease by Heinz Kalk in the 1930s. Hope reported in 1937 on the use of laparoscopy to diagnose ectopic pregnancy. In 1944, Raoul Palmer placed his patients in the Trendelenburg position after gaseous distention of the abdomen and thus was able to reliably perform gynecologic laparoscope.

Georg Wolf, a Berlin manufacturer of rigid endoscopes established in 1906, produced the Sussmann flexible gastroscope in 1911. Karl Storz began producing instruments for ENT specialists in 1945 through his company, Karl Storz GmbH.

Basil Hirschowitz, Larry Curtiss, and Wilbur Peters invented the first fiber optic endoscope in 1957. Earlier in the 1950s Harold Hopkins had designed a "fibroscope" consisting of a bundle of flexible glass fibres able to coherently transmit an image. This proved useful both medically and industrially, and subsequent research led to further improvements in image quality.