Mathematical modeling for diffuse reflectance and fluorescence spectroscopy in the discrimination of oral cancer

Abstract

Recently, Molecular diagnosis has gained attraction not only to understand the molecular mechanism of transformation from normal to cancer but also in discriminating the cancer from normal. In this context, optical spectroscopic methods viz; diffuse reflectance, and fluorescence spectroscopy have been considered in diagnostic oncology as they are simple, non-invasive, and highly sensitive to metabolic changes in cells. Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy can be used to extract optical properties of tissue and monitor biochemical and morphological changes of tissue which are associated with various neoplastic conditions. The fluorescence emission from various native fluorophores such as tryptophan, tyrosine, collagen/elastin, NADH, FAD, and porphyrin are considered to discriminate various neoplastic conditions of tissue. Further, due to optical complexity of tissue, understanding of light tissue interaction and extracting optical properties by use of both experiment and mathematical modelling have also been considered in this study.Based on these, the present thesis has been divided into seven chapters. The first chapter deals with brief introduction about the causes and current status of global cancer, and the necessity of cancer detection by noninvasive echniques. Modelling of light propagation in biological tissue using various analytical, empirical, and numerical methods and the advantages of Monte Carlo method for extracting optical properties from turbid media. The second chapter discusses about the various materials used for formulating tissue phantoms, and the equipments for experimental measurements such as UV-Visible spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy, and integrating spheresetup newline