Optical Coherence Tomography Of Oral Mucosa

Date

2007-08-23T01:56:26Z

Authors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Biomedical Engineering

Abstract

Oral cancer causes 120000* deaths annually around the world and 280000* new cases are diagnosed every year. Technology has developed and the death rate of oral cancer has improved over the last few decades; hence to improve the survival rate, development of a technique able to diagnose carcinomas in its early stages is very important. OCT is a non invasive imaging technique capable to provide high resolution microstructure images of tissue. A development of in vivo OCT; capable to image tissue with micrometer resolution and able to identify pre cancerous morphological changes non invasively could improve survival rate in cancer patients and also quality of life. The work was started with ex vivo OCT imaging of extracted tissue samples. Tissue extraction and storing methods have major impact on optical properties of tissues, which diminishes the quality of OCT images of such samples. Hence, there is a need for a technique which performs in vivo imaging. In vivo OCT system was developed to perform real time imaging. Images of normal healthy oral mucosa were taken and compared with standard histological images. The OCT images were taken from various regions of the mouth like lip, gingival, tongue, buccal mucosa and mapping was done. Further, image processing module was developed to provide better quality real time images. OCT images were compared with standard histological images. The OCT images of oral cavity shows distinct layers of epithelium, lamina propria and basal membrane. The capability of OCT images to distinguish different tissue layers like epithelium and other sub epithelial layers supports the possible application of OCT imaging in early detection of carcinomas.

Description

Keywords

Citation