Optical quantification of epithelial layer thickness as a measure of oral inflammation

David W. Hattery; Brenda Hattery; Moinuddin Hassan; Victor V. Chernomordik; Abby Vogel; Farid Hekmat; Amir H. Gandjbakhche

doi:10.1117/12.476656

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3 July 2003 Optical quantification of epithelial layer thickness as a measure of oral inflammation

David W. Hattery, Brenda Hattery, Moinuddin Hassan, Victor V. Chernomordik, Abby Vogel, Farid Hekmat, Amir H. Gandjbakhche

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Proceedings Volume 4950, Lasers in Dentistry IX; (2003) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.476656
Event: Biomedical Optics, 2003, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

For individuals with cancer risk factors, reducing tissue inflammation may reduce the risk of developing cancer. This is the basis of several clinical trials evaluating potential chemoprevention drugs. These trials require quantitative assessments of inflammation which, for the oral epithelium, are traditionally provided by punch biopsies. To reduce patient discomfort and morbidity, we have developed a non-invasive alternative using diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. Though any optical system has the potential for probing near-surface structures, traditional methods of accounting for scattering of photons are generally invalid for typical epithelial thicknesses. We have previously developed a theory that is valid in this regime and validated it with Monte Carlo simulations. We use a differential measure with acute sensitivity to small changes in layer scattering coefficients. To assess the capability of the approach to quantify epithelial thickness, detailed Monte Carlo simulations and measurements on phantom models of a two layered structure have been performed. Preliminary results from this work show that our key feature varies less than 20 percent despite four-fold changes in scattering coefficients and ten-fold changes in absorption coefficients. This indicates that the method will be of practical clinical value for quantifying epithelial thickness in vivo.

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David W. Hattery, Brenda Hattery, Moinuddin Hassan, Victor V. Chernomordik, Abby Vogel, Farid Hekmat, and Amir H. Gandjbakhche "Optical quantification of epithelial layer thickness as a measure of oral inflammation", Proc. SPIE 4950, Lasers in Dentistry IX, (3 July 2003); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.476656

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