Broadband diffuse reflectance spectroscopy for colorectal surgical guidance (Conference Presentation)

Even though recent advances in medical devices have significantly improved clinical interventions, more accurate differentiation of biological tissues is still required to improve clinical decision-making. Tissue identification can be performed by using molecular-sensitive techniques such as diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), which is allows label-free, non-invasive, real-time and in situ interrogation of biological tissues. In this study, we used broadband DRS to extract biomolecule concentrations of gastrointestinal tissues and evaluated its potential for tissue identification and cancer detection. Diffuse reflectance spectra were analysed in an extended wavelength range between 350 nm and 1900 nm. This range covers the third optical window, which may allow better tissue identification for laparoscopy and gastrointestinal robotic surgery. Chromophore concentrations were obtained by using an inverse Monte Carlo Lookup table model to fit the reflectance spectrum.