Optical sensor for fast and accurate lung cancer detection with tissue autofluorescence and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy

Background: Cancer is a severe threat to human health, and surgery is a major method of cancer treatment. This study aimed to develop an optical sensor for fast cancer tissue.

Methods: The tissue autofluorescence spectrum and diffuse reflectance spectrum were obtained by using a laboratory-developed optical sensor system. A total of 151 lung tissue samples were used in this ex vivo study.

Results: Experimental results demonstrate that tissue autofluorescence spectroscopy with a 365-nm excitation has better performance than diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, and 63 of 64 test samples (98.4% accuracy) were correctly classified with tissue autofluorescence spectroscopy and our developed data analysis method.

Conclusions: Our promising ex vivo study results show that the developed optical sensor system has great promise for future clinical translation for intraoperative lung cancer detection and other applications.