A Clinical Study to Assess Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy with an Auto-Calibrated, Pressure-Sensing Optical Probe in Head and Neck Cancer.
Ashlyn G RickardHusam MikatiAntoine MansouratiDaniel StevensonMarlee KriegerDaniel RockeRamon EsclamadoMark W DewhirstNirmala RamanujamWalter T LeeGregory M PalmerPublished in: Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) (2023)
Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) is a powerful tool for quantifying optical and physiological tissue properties such as hemoglobin oxygen saturation and vascularity. DRS is increasingly used clinically for distinguishing cancerous lesions from normal tissue. However, its widespread clinical acceptance is still limited due to uncontrolled probe-tissue interface pressure that influences reproducibility and introduces operator-dependent results. In this clinical study, we assessed and validated a pressure-sensing and automatic self-calibration DRS in patients with suspected head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). The clinical study enrolled nineteen patients undergoing HNSCC surgical biopsy procedures. Patients consented to evaluation of this improved DRS system during surgery. For each patient, we obtained 10 repeated measurements on one tumor site and one distant normal location. Using a Monte Carlo-based model, we extracted the hemoglobin saturation data along with total hemoglobin content and scattering properties. A total of twelve cancer tissue samples from HNSCC patients and fourteen normal tissues were analyzed. A linear mixed effects model tested for significance between repeated measurements and compared tumor versus normal tissue. These results demonstrate that cancerous tissues have a significantly lower hemoglobin saturation compared to normal controls ( p < 0.001), which may be reflective of tumor hypoxia. In addition, there were minimal changes over time upon probe placement and repeated measurement, indicating that the pressure-induced changes were minimal and repeated measurements did not differ significantly from the initial value. This study demonstrates the feasibility of conducting optical spectroscopy measurements on intact lesions prior to removal during HNSCC procedures, and established that this probe provides diagnostically-relevant physiologic information that may impact further treatment.
Keyphrases
- end stage renal disease
- high resolution
- peritoneal dialysis
- chronic kidney disease
- newly diagnosed
- patients undergoing
- living cells
- ejection fraction
- quantum dots
- single molecule
- gene expression
- prognostic factors
- minimally invasive
- high speed
- endothelial cells
- squamous cell carcinoma
- clinical trial
- squamous cell
- machine learning
- mass spectrometry
- papillary thyroid
- coronary artery disease
- electronic health record
- case report
- atrial fibrillation
- free survival
- diabetic rats
- high grade
- neural network