<title>Fluorescence depolarization of normal and diseased skin tissues</title>

Abstract

Fluorescence spectrum is known to be a sensitive tool for detecting microscopic changes in the environment of fluorophores. Steady state fluorescence spectroscopy has been utilized to probe the environment of these molecules in normal and diseased skin human tissue. For fluorescence polarization spectroscopy of human skin tissues, the sample were excited with a plane polarized 50mW argon ion laser operated at 488 nm and the luminescence spectra were recorded after passing through an analyzer. The spectra were recorded with SPEX 1877E triplemate attached with a cooled PMT and DM3000R data acquisition system. The polarized fluorescence spectra of cancerous human skin tissue is different from normal human tissue. The maxima of the spectra of normal and cancerous human tissue are located around 540 nm and 530 nm respectively. The main feature of the computed anisotropy at different wavelengths is the higher value of degree of anisotropy of cancerous tissue compared to the normal counterpart. Higher degree of anisotropy of cancerous tissue may imply that the fluorophores are more tightly bound to proteins or are in a more viscous environment.© (1998) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.