Multimodal snapshot spectral imaging for oral cancer diagnostics: a pilot study

Abstract

Optical imaging and spectroscopy have emerged as effective tools for detecting malignant changes associated with oral cancer. While clinical studies have demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity for detection, current devices either interrogate a small region or can have reduced performance for some benign lesions. We describe a snapshot imaging spectrometer that combines the large field-of-view of widefield imaging with the diagnostic strength of spectroscopy. The portable device can stream RGB images at 7.2 frames per second and record both autofluorescence and reflectance spectral datacubes in < 1 second. We report initial data from normal volunteers and oral cancer patients.

Lenslet array tunable snapshot imaging spectrometer (LATIS) for hyperspectral fluorescence microscopy

“…These spectral imagers can be designed to be advantageous over existing scanning spectrometers due to longer pixel dwell times, permitting their use in dim applications, and higher speeds, which eliminate motion artifacts for dynamic scenes [18]. The advantages of these spectral imagers have seen their increased use in microscopy applications over the last few years [19,20] and in vivo tissue imaging [21][22][23][24][25]. Each pixel's exposure time to the collected light is the same as the time used to acquire the datacube, which increases irradiance per pixel in comparison to scanning techniques with the same datacube acquisition time or frame rate.…”

Development of a multimodal foveated endomicroscope for the detection of oral cancer

“…In an effort to overcome the limitations of COE and autofluorescence imaging, several modalities have been explored including nonlinear microscopy [16,17], Raman spectroscopy [18,19], fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) [20,21], optical coherence tomography [22,23], spectroscopy with point spectrometers [24,25], multispectral imaging [26,27] and confocal microscopy [20,28]. While each of these methods delivers valuable information to aid in the diagnosis of oral cancer, studies have suggested that a combination of these techniques could improve performance [5,7,21,27].…”

“…While each of these methods delivers valuable information to aid in the diagnosis of oral cancer, studies have suggested that a combination of these techniques could improve performance [5,7,21,27]. For example, a pilot study with multispectral imaging demonstrated the advantages of combining spectral and spatial data acquisition over the entire oral cavity [27].…”

“…While each of these methods delivers valuable information to aid in the diagnosis of oral cancer, studies have suggested that a combination of these techniques could improve performance [5,7,21,27]. For example, a pilot study with multispectral imaging demonstrated the advantages of combining spectral and spatial data acquisition over the entire oral cavity [27]. While several point spectroscopy techniques have shown high sensitivity and specificity, the sparse spatial sampling of fiber optic probes makes it challenging to interrogate the entire surface of the oral cavity [24,25].…”

“…Multispectral imaging improves upon point spectroscopy by providing both spatial and spectral data. However, these systems are still limited because they lack the spatial resolution necessary to identify the cellular changes associated with the presence of neoplasia [26,27]. Confocal microscopy, a technique employing a spatial filter to improve spatial resolution by providing optical sectioning allows for visualization of the cellular changes associated with dysplasia [28].…”