Abstract
Oral cancers suffer from poor disease-free survival rates due to delayed diagnosis. Noninvasive, rapid, objective approaches as adjuncts to visual inspection can help in better management of oral cancers. Raman spectroscopy (RS) has shown potential in identification of oral premalignant and malignant conditions and also in the detection of early cancer changes like cancer-field-effects (CFE) at buccal mucosa subsite. Anatomic differences between different oral subsites have also been reported using RS. In this study, anatomical differences between subsites and their possible influence on healthy vs pathological classification were evaluated on 85 oral cancer and 72 healthy subjects. Spectra were acquired from buccal mucosa, lip and tongue in healthy, contralateral (internal healthy control), premalignant and cancer conditions using fiber-optic Raman spectrometer. Mean spectra indicate predominance of lipids in healthy buccal mucosa, contribution of both lipids and proteins in lip while major dominance of protein in tongue spectra. From healthy to tumor, changes in protein secondary-structure, DNA and heme-related features were observed. Principal component linear discriminant analysis (PC-LDA) followed by leave-one-out-cross-validation (LOOCV) was used for data analysis. Findings indicate buccal mucosa and tongue are distinct entities, while lip misclassifies with both these subsites. Additionally, the diagnostic algorithm for individual subsites gave improved classification efficiencies with respect to the pooled subsites model. However, as the pooled subsites model yielded 98% specificity and 100% sensitivity, this model may be more useful for preliminary screening applications. Large-scale validation studies are a pre-requisite before envisaging future clinical applications.
Highlights
Oral cancer is the 16th most common cancer worldwide, with about 300,000 cases reported annually.[1]
Previous studies onnger-print and high wavenumber region have demonstrated that buccal and labial mucosa, keratinized or masticatory mucosa and specialized mucosa on the tongue can be classied as distinct clusters of subsites.[34,35,36]
While some studies indicate that these subsite-anatomical di®erences confound the healthy and pathological discrimination,[37] other studies have stated that the inherent anatomical di®erences may not hinder healthy vs pathological classication.[47]
Summary
Oral cancer is the 16th most common cancer worldwide, with about 300,000 cases reported annually.[1]. In spite of its amenability and accessibility to visual inspection, cancers in these oral subsites are frequently diagnosed at later stages, especially in developing countries where >60% cases are detected in advanced stages. This results in low treatment outcomes and considerable costs to patients who cannot a®ord healthcare.[9] Early diagnosis can lead to improved cure rates, lower cost of treatments and morbidity associated with oral cancers.[10,11]
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