In-vivo autofluorescence of nasopharyngeal carcinoma and normal tissue

Abstract

An optical imaging and spectroscopy system has been developed for the study of in vivo fluorescence of nasopharngeal tissue through an endoscope. The system records the fluorescence signal in the imaging plane of the endoscopic system. This allows analyze the characteristics of the light induced fluorescence (LIF) spectra recorded by each pixel of the two dimensional detector which may be used for fluorescence endoscopic imaging. If the endoscope for fluorescence endoscopy is the same as one employed for the in vivo fluorescence study, the algorithms developed to distinguish the diseased tissue from normal tissue based on the in vivo fluorescence study should be highly reliable for fluorescence imaging of lesions. In this work, fluorescence spectra were collected from 27 full term patients. Different algorithms were tested for separation of cancerous lesions from normal tissue. High sensitivity and specificity were achieved.