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Introduction Microsurgical transsphenoidal approach has been established as the standard surgical treatment for pituitary adenomas, including giant ones. There is, however, a number of patients with extremely large tumours, and/or with tumours growing into areas that are very difficult to reach[for full text, please go to the a.m. URL], ESBS 2005: Skull Base Surgery: An Interdisciplinary Challenge; 7th Congress of the European Skull Base Society held in association with the 13th Congress of the German Society of Skull Base Surgery

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Over the last decades the significant grow of interest of photonics devices is observed in various fields of applications. Due to the market demands, the current research studies are focused on the technologies providing miniaturized, reliable low-cost micro-optical systems, particularly the ones featuring the fabrication of high aspect ratio structures. A high potential of these technologies comes from the fact that fabrication process is not limited to single optical components, but entire systems integrating sets of elements could be fabricated. This could in turn result in a significant saving on the assembly and packaging costs. We present a brief overview of the most common high aspect ratio fabrication technologies for micro-optical components followed by some characterization studies of these techniques. The sidewall quality and internal homogeneity will be considered as the most crucial parameters, having an impact on the wavefront propagation in the fabricated components. We show the characterization procedure and measurement results for components prototyped with Deep Proton Writing and glass micromachining technology replicated with Hot Embossing and Elastomeric Mould Vacuum Casting technology. We discuss the pros and cons for using these technologies for the production of miniaturized interferometers blocks. In this paper we present the status of our research on the new technology chain and we show the concept of microinterferometers to be fabricated within presented technology chain.