title: Diagnosis of oral submucous fibrosis with optical coherence tomography.
abstract: The epithelium (EP) thickness and the standard deviation (SD) of A-mode scan intensity in the laminar propria (LP) layer are used as effective indicators for the diagnosis of oral submucous fibrosis (OSF) based on the noninvasive clinical scanning of a swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT) system of approximately 6 mum in axial resolution (in tissue) and 103 dB in sensitivity. Compared with the corresponding parameters in healthy oral mucosal mucosa, in OSF mucosa, the EP thickness becomes smaller and the SD of A-mode scan intensity in the LP layer (LP SD) also becomes smaller. The LP SD can also be used for effectively differentiating OSF (small LP SD) from lesion (large LP SD). This application is particularly useful in the case of a lesion without a clear surface feature. Meanwhile, the use of the SD of A-mode scan intensity in the EP layer (EP SD) can further help in differentiating OSF (medium EP SD) from healthy oral mucosal (small EP SD) and lesion (large EP SD) conditions. Compared with the conventional method of maximum mouth opening measurement, the use of the proposed OCT scanning results can be a more effective technique for OSF diagnosis.
authors.affiliation: National Taiwan University, Institute of Photonics and Optoelectronics, 1 Roosevelt Road, Section 4, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Cheng-Kuang
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Meng-Tsan
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Tsai
authors.forename: Hsiang-Chieh
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Hsin-Ming
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Chun-Pin
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Chiang
authors.forename: Yih-Ming
authors.initials: YM
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: C C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006801:Humans; D009914:Oral Submucous Fibrosis / Q000473:pathology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*