In vivo optical coherence tomography for the diagnosis of oral malignancy.
OBJECTIVE
Oral cancer results in 10,000 U.S. deaths annually. Improved highly sensitive diagnostics allowing early detection of oral cancer would benefit patient survival and quality of life. Objective was to investigate in vivo non-invasive optical coherence tomography (OCT) techniques for imaging and diagnosing neoplasia-related epithelial, sub-epithelial changes throughout carcinogenesis.


METHODS
In the standard hamster cheek pouch model for oral carcinogenesis (n = 36), in vivo OCT was used to image epithelial and sub-epithelial change. OCT- and histopathology-based diagnoses on a scale of 0 (healthy) to 6 (squamous cell carcinoma, SCC) were performed at all stages throughout carcinogenesis by two blinded investigators.


RESULTS
Epithelial, sub-epithelial structures were clearly discernible using OCT. OCT diagnosis agreed with the histopathological gold standard in 80% of readings.


CONCLUSIONS
In vivo OCT demonstrates excellent potential as a diagnostic tool in the oral cavity.
Wilder-Smith
Petra
P
Beckman Laser Institute, University of California-Irvine, 1002 Health Sciences Road East, Irvine, CA 92612, USA. pwsmith@bli.uci.edu
Jung
Woong-Gyu
WG
Brenner
Matthew
M
Osann
Kathryn
K
Beydoun
Hamza
H
Messadi
Diana
D
Chen
Zhongping
Z
D000818:Animals; D002294:Carcinoma, Squamous Cell / Q000473:pathology*; D006224:Cricetinae; D004867:Equipment Design; D009062:Mouth Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000295:instrumentation