Mini cameras at the end of a probe that are designed to 'see' like an insect's compound eye could eventually be used in medical endoscopes.

Ömer Cogal and Yusuf Leblebici at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne built a dome-shaped device measuring 10 millimetres wide with 24 tiny cameras covering its surface (pictured). In between the cameras are small, light-emitting fibre-optic cables. The cameras are placed in a way that provides a 180° × 180° or 360° × 90° panoramic field of view. The researchers found that the resolution of the system was 1,000 times higher than other insect-eye-inspired devices of a similar size.

When tested inside a tube mimicking a human colon, the device could reveal areas that are normally missed by conventional endoscopes.

IEEE Trans. Biomed. Circuits Syst. http://doi.org/bj3q (2016)