title: Enhancement of early cervical cancer diagnosis with epithelial layer analysis of fluorescence lifetime images.
abstract: This work reports the use of layer analysis to aid the fluorescence lifetime diagnosis of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) from H&E stained cervical tissue sections. The mean and standard deviation of lifetimes in single region of interest (ROI) of cervical epithelium were previously shown to correlate to the gold standard histopathological classification of early cervical cancer. These previously defined single ROIs were evenly divided into layers for analysis. A 10-layer model revealed a steady increase in fluorescence lifetime from the inner to the outer epithelial layers of healthy tissue sections, suggesting a close association with cellular maturity. The shorter lifetime and minimal lifetime increase towards the epithelial surface of CIN-affected regions are in good agreement with the absence of cellular maturation in CIN. Mean layer lifetimes in the top-half cervical epithelium were used as feature vectors for extreme learning machine (ELM) classifier discriminations. It was found that the proposed layer analysis technique greatly improves the sensitivity and specificity to 94.6% and 84.3%, respectively, which can better supplement the traditional gold standard cervical histopathological examinations.
authors.affiliation: Optimus, Photonics Center of Excellence, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gu
authors.affiliation: Optimus, Photonics Center of Excellence, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Chit Yaw
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.affiliation: Optimus, Photonics Center of Excellence, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Beng Koon
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Ng
authors.affiliation: Optimus, Photonics Center of Excellence, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Lin Bo
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: KK Women's and Children's Hospital, Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Soo Kim
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Lim-Tan
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore; National Cancer Center, Singapore, Singapore; Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Caroline Guat Lay
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D055088:Early Detection of Cancer / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence / Q000379:methods; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D002583:Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D002578:Uterine Cervical Dysplasia / Q000473:pathology*