Real-time in vivo diagnosis of laryngeal carcinoma with rapid fiber-optic Raman spectroscopy

Abstract

We assess the clinical utility of a unique simultaneous fingerprint (FP) (i.e., 8001800 cm-1) and high-wavenumber (HW) (i.e., 2800-3600 cm-1) fiber-optic Raman spectroscopy for in vivo diagnosis of laryngeal cancer at endoscopy. A total of 2124 high-quality in vivo FP/HW Raman spectra (normal = 1321; cancer = 581) were acquired from 101 tissue sites (normal = 71; cancer = 30) of 60 patients (normal = 44; cancer = 16) undergoing routine endoscopic examination. FP/HW Raman spectra differ significantly between normal and cancerous laryngeal tissue that could be attributed to changes of proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and the bound water content in the larynx. Partial least squares-discriminant analysis and leave-one tissue site-out, cross-validation were employed on the in vivo FP/HW tissue Raman spectra acquired, yielding a diagnostic accuracy of 91.1% (sensitivity: 93.3% (28/30); specificity: 90.1% (64/71)) for laryngeal cancer identification, which is superior to using either FP (accuracy: 86.1%; sensitivity: 86.7% (26/30); specificity: 85.9% (61/71)) or HW (accuracy: 84.2%; sensitivity: 76.7% (23/30); specificity: 87.3% (62/71)) Raman technique alone. Further receiver operating characteristic analysis reconfirms the best performance of the simultaneous FP/HW Raman technique for laryngeal cancer diagnosis. We demonstrate for the first time that the simultaneous FP/HW Raman spectroscopy technique can be used for improving real-time in vivo diagnosis of laryngeal carcinoma during endoscopic examination.