  Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) is a technique that gives simultaneously
the spectrum of each spatial sampling element in a given object field. It is a
powerful tool which rearranges the data cube (x, y, lambda) represented by two
spatial dimensions defining the field and the spectral decomposition in a
detector plane. In IFS, the spatial unit reorganizes the field and the spectral
unit is being composed of a classical spectrograph.The development of a
Collimating Slicer aims at proposing a new type of integral field spectrograph
which should be more compact. The main idea is to combine the image slicer with
the collimator of the spectrograph, thus mixing the spatial and spectral units.
The traditional combination of slicer, pupil and slit elements and the
spectrograph collimator is replaced by a new one composed of a slicer and
collimator only. In this paper, the state of the art of integral field
spectroscopy using image slicers is described. The new system based onto the
development of a Collimating Slicer for optical integral field spectroscopy is
depicted. First system analysis results and future improvements are discussed.
It finally turns out that this new system looks very promising for low
resolution spectroscopy.
