The clinical usefulness of optical coherence tomography during cancer interventions

Abstract

IntroductionTumor detection and visualization plays a key role in the clinical workflow of a patient with suspected cancer, both in the diagnosis and treatment. Several optical imaging techniques have been evaluated for guidance during oncological interventions. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a technique which has been widely evaluated during the past decades. This review aims to determine the clinical usefulness of OCT during cancer interventions focussing on qualitative features, quantitative features and the diagnostic value of OCT.MethodsA systematic literature search was performed for articles published before May 2018 using OCT in the field of surgical oncology. Based on these articles, an overview of the clinical usefulness of OCT was provided per tumor type.ResultsA total of 785 articles were revealed by our search, of which a total of 136 original articles were available for analysis, which formed the basis of this review. OCT is currently utilised for both preoperative diagnosis and intraoperative detection of skin, oral, lung, breast, hepatobiliary, gastrointestinal, urological, and gynaecological malignancies. It showed promising results in tumor detection on a microscopic level, especially using higher resolution imaging techniques, such as high-definition OCT and full-field OCT.ConclusionIn the near future, OCT could be used as an additional tool during bronchoscopic or endoscopic interventions and could also be implemented in margin assessment during (laparoscopic) cancer surgery if a laparoscopic or handheld OCT device will be further developed to make routine clinical use possible.

Recent advances in nuclear and hybrid detection modalities for image-guided surgery

“…OCT is a technique often compared to ultrasound. However, instead of sound pulses emitted and received by the ultrasound probe, an OCT probe typically emits near-infrared light pulses in to the tissue and detects the back-reflected light [259]. Spatial resolution of this technique is in the order of μm's.…”

Combination of High-Resolution Optical Coherence Tomography and Raman Spectroscopy for Improved Staging and Grading in Bladder Cancer

“…Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a label-free optical technique based on low coherence light interferometry allowing for fast cross-sectional views of tissue structure [9][10][11]. As this method is non-invasive, non-destructive and label-free it has found broad application in diagnostic of different types of skin cancer, oral cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer and esophageal cancer [12]. Yuan et al showed a combined OCT and ultrasound approach to investigate bladder cancer in a rat model [13].…”

Full-field optical coherence tomography for the diagnosis of giant cell arteritis

“…When compared to other modalities such as conventional OCT or even confocal microscopy, FF-OCT was demonstrated to significantly improve spatial resolution by a factor varying from five to ten depending on the acquisition axis [21]. Until now, most groups have focused on the potential role of FF-OCT during oncologic interventions as new routine approach to surgical pathology [22], and, except for one preliminary study in which the superficial temporal arteries were imaged with dermal OCT [23], there has been no reported attempt to employ high definition interference microscopy for the pathological diagnosis of GCA. The present work pursues the hypothesis that FF-OCT could help both the clinician and pathologist to improve TAB performance, and compares, for the first time, FF-OCT and conventional histological examination for the pathological diagnosis of GCA.…”