Improvement of tissue analysis and classification using optical coherence tomography combined with Raman spectroscopy

Chih-Hao Liu,Shang Wang,Chen Wu,Kirill V Larin,Jing Lu,Wei-Chuan Shih,Ji Qi

doi:10.1142/s1793545815500066

Abstract

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) provides significant advantages of high resolution (approaching the histopathology level) real-time imaging of tissues without use of contrast agents. Based on these advantages, the microstructural features of tumors can be visualized and detected intra-operatively. However, it is still not clinically accepted for tumor margin delineation due to poor specificity and accuracy. In contrast, Raman spectroscopy (RS) can obtain tissue information at the molecular level, but does not provide real-time imaging capability. Therefore, combining OCT and RS could provide synergy. To this end, we present a tissue analysis and classification method using both the slope of OCT intensity signal vs depth and the principle components from the RS spectrum as the indicators for tissue characterization. The goal of this study was to understand prediction accuracy of OCT and combined OCT/RS method for classification of optically similar tissues and organs. Our pilot experiments were performed on mouse kidneys, livers, and small intestines (SIs). The prediction accuracy with five-fold cross validation of the method has been evaluated by the support vector machine (SVM) method. The results demonstrate that tissue characterization based on the OCT/RS method was superior compared to using OCT structural information alone. This combined OCT/RS method is potentially useful as a noninvasive optical biopsy technique for rapid and automatic tissue characterization during surgery.

Highlights

Surgical resection is currently one of the most e®ective solutions for cancer treatment
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) technique is widely considered as a real-time intraoperative tumor margin assessment because of its high-resolution images, rapid scanning, and optical properties
The main reason is that OCT images are composed of the re°ectivity of light, which can only re°ect the texture information instead of molecular information

Summary

Introduction

Surgical resection is currently one of the most e®ective solutions for cancer treatment. Intraoperative gross examination (macroscopic) for tumor margin is performed by the naked eye, and, if a suspicious region is identied, more accurate diagnosis can be obtained via microscopic analysis of frozen section. This is time-consuming and can take up to an hour and can be biased by the small area of tissue examination. The outcome of the resection surgery can be signicantly enhanced by availability of a real-time, noninvasive and cross-sectional imaging tool capable of the intraoperative detection of tumor margins

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