This work contains a series of clinical studies conducted at a Brazilian cancer hospital to validate a low-cost, portable, high-resolution microendoscope (HRME) for real-time diagnostic evaluation of cervical lesions. Findings from these clinical studies led me to explore two approaches to further improve HRME: 1) improved image analysis algorithms and 2) improved optical instrumentation. In total, five studies are presented: three clinical studies and two technical studies. Taken altogether, these studies provide strong evidence for the potential of HRME to improve cervical cancer prevention in low-resource healthcare settings.