nCLE For Diagnosis Of Peripheral Lung Nodules By Robotic Navigational Bronchoscopy

Needle based confocal laser endomicroscopy (nCLE) employs a small fiber which can be passed through a biopsy needle to enable real time microscopic imaging of cells. With resolution of 3.5 microns it is possible to identify key features consistent with malignancy and pulmonary fibrosis. (Wijmans, et al., 2019). The effectiveness of nCLE with intravenous fluorescein has been demonstrated in central lung cancers using esophageal ultrasound guided needle placement (Wijmans, et al., 2019). In this study, the proposed nCLE lung cancer criteria had high accuracy for lung cancer detection and were consistently recognized by multiple raters. Probe based confocal microscopy (pCLE) has also been used in conjunction with a radial probe EBUS in evaluating solitary pulmonary nodules with a diagnostic accuracy of 79.2%. (Hassan, et al., 2017) Needle based confocal laser endomicroscopy (nCLE) has not previously been used in conjunction with robotic navigational bronchoscopy.