Near-infrared diffuse correlation spectroscopy in cancer diagnosis and therapy monitoring

Abstract

Abstract. A novel near-infrared (NIR) diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) for tumor blood flow measurement is introduced in this review paper. DCS measures speckle fluctuations of NIR diffuse light in tissue, which are sensitive to the motions of red blood cells. DCS offers several attractive new features for tumor blood flow measurement such as noninvasiveness, portability, high temporal resolution, and relatively large penetration depth. DCS technology has been utilized for continuous measurement of tumor blood flow before, during, and after cancer therapies. In those pilot investigations, DCS hemodynamic measurements add important new variables into the mix for differentiation of benign from malignant tumors and for prediction of treatment outcomes. It is envisaged that with more clinical applications in large patient populations, DCS might emerge as an important method of choice for bedside management of cancer therapy, and it will certainly provide important new information about cancer physiology that may be of use in diagnosis.

Clinical applications of near-infrared diffuse correlation spectroscopy and tomography for tissue blood flow monitoring and imaging

“…The principle and instrumentation of DCS have been described elsewhere (Boas et al , 1995; Cheung et al , 2001; Durduran and Yodh, 2014; Irwin et al , 2011; Yu, 2012b, a; Yu, 2012c). Briefly, a long-coherence laser delivers NIR light via an optical fiber to the tissue (Fig.…”

Photodynamic Therapy-Induced Microvascular Changes in a Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer Model Assessed by Photoacoustic Microscopy and Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy

“…We used DCS to monitor changes in blood flow caused by PDT [16,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. Briefly, the DCS setup consisted of a long coherence length, 785 nm laser (CrystaLaser), four photon-counting detectors (Perkin Elmer, Waltham, MA, USA) and a custom-built autocorrelator board (Correlator.com).…”

“…Tumor destruction can be obtained by vascular shutdown, direct cell kill, activation of host immune response, or a combination of these mechanisms [9,10]. Most PSs localize in the endothelium and can induce substantial vascular changes during PDT, making microvasculature changes a good target for monitoring the efficacy of PDT [6,[11][12][13][14][15][16]. We have shown recently that blood flow changes assessed with diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS), a diffuse optical spectroscopy method to quantify tissue blood flow, can be indicative of PDT efficacy [17].…”

Multidistance diffuse correlation spectroscopy for simultaneous estimation of blood flow index and optical properties

“…[3][4][5] In traditional DCS analysis, the optical properties of the medium, absorption (μ a ), and reduced scattering (μ 0 s ) coefficients should be known and the errors in the estimation of these parameters influence the calculated blood flow index (BFI). Most significant errors come from errors in estimating the scattering coefficient, whereas the results are less sensitive to the absorption coefficient.…”