Towards monitoring dysplastic progression in the oral cavity using a hybrid fiber-bundle imaging and spectroscopy probe

Intraepithelial dysplasia of the oral mucosa typically originates in the proliferative cell layer at the basement membrane and extends to the upper epithelial layers as the disease progresses. Detection of malignancies typically occurs upon visual inspection by non-specialists at a late-stage. In this manuscript, we validate a quantitative hybrid imaging and spectroscopy microendoscope to monitor dysplastic progression within the oral cavity microenvironment in a phantom and pre-clinical study. We use an empirical model to quantify optical properties and sampling depth from sub-diffuse reflectance spectra (450–750 nm) at two source-detector separations (374 and 730 μm). Average errors in recovering reduced scattering (5–26 cm(−1)) and absorption coefficients (0–10 cm(−1)) in hemoglobin-based phantoms were approximately 2% and 6%, respectively. Next, a 300 μm-thick phantom tumor model was used to validate the probe’s ability to monitor progression of a proliferating optical heterogeneity. Finally, the technique was demonstrated on 13 healthy volunteers and volume-averaged optical coefficients, scattering exponent, hemoglobin concentration, oxygen saturation, and sampling depth are presented alongside a high-resolution microendoscopy image of oral mucosa from one volunteer. This multimodal microendoscopy approach encompasses both structural and spectroscopic reporters of perfusion within the tissue microenvironment and can potentially be used to monitor tumor response to therapy.