Delineation of an oral cancer lesion with swept-source optical coherence tomography

Abstract

We demonstrate the ex vivo imaging of an oral cancerous sample with a swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) system. With the axial resolution of 8 microm in free space and system sensitivity of 108 dB, we can well distinguish the normal and abnormal tissue portions in a sample. In particular, we analyze the lateral variation of A-scan profiles to show two parameters of SS-OCT signal for delineating an oral cancer lesion. One of the parameters is the decay constant in the exponential fitting of the SS-OCT signal intensity along depth. This decay constant decreases as the A-scan point moves laterally across the margin of a lesion. The other parameter is the standard deviation of the SS-OCT signal intensity fluctuation in an A-scan. This parameter increases significantly when the A-scan point is moved across the transition region between the normal and abnormal portions. Such parameters are useful for determining the margins of oral cancer.

High resolution spectral-domain optical coherence tomography using a thermal light source

“…2. We can see the spectrum curve was not perfectly Gaussian distribution, therefore, the axial resolution of the system and the imaging quality would be decreased (Fercher et al 2003;Tsai et al 2008). The central wavelength λ 0 and the full width at half maximum (FWHM) λ of the tungsten halogen lamp was 650 and 225 nm respectively.…”

How Close Are We to Real Time Optical Margin Control in Head and Neck Oncologic Surgery?

“…OCT has been applied in intraoperative margin detection in cutaneous, vulvar, breast, and gastro-intestinal malignancy [47][48][49][50][51] . OCT has been examined in several diagnostic/detection applications in the head and neck such as larynx, oral, and esophageal cancer however studies examining the ability of OCT to determine the accuracy intra-operative margins are less common [20,21,49,[52][53][54][55][56][57] . Hamdoon et al, examined the use of OCT for intraoperative margin evaluation in twenty-eight T1-T2 N0M0 oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma patients.…”

Depth-resolved imaging of colon tumor using optical coherence tomography and fluorescence laminar optical tomography

“…Tissue extinction coefficient (µ t ) (or the slope of axial attenuation) is an indication of local tissue scattering changes associated with neoplasia, and has been shown to be able to detect dysplasia in oral cavities [66,67] and breast cancer [68,69]. The extinction coefficient (µ t ) can be estimated by fitting the OCT axial-scan intensity profiles with the single-scattering model: I(z) ∝ exp(−2*µ t *z) [70].…”