Using fiber-bending-generated speckles for improved working distance and background rejection in lensless micro-endoscopy

Lensless flexible fiber-bundle-based endoscopes allow imaging at depths beyond the reach of conventional microscopes with a minimal footprint. These multicore fibers provide a simple solution for wide-field fluorescent imaging when the target is adjacent to the fiber facet. However, they suffer from a very limited working distance and out-of-focus background. Here, we carefully study the dynamic speckle illumination patterns generated by bending a commercial fiber bundle and show that they can be exploited to allow extended working distance and background rejection, using a super-resolution fluctuations imaging analysis of multiple frames, without the addition of any optical elements.