Near-infrared autofluorescence imaging for colonic cancer detection

We explore an NIR autofluorescence imaging technique for cancer diagnosis and detection. A set of tissue images including NIR white light images, autofluorescence (AF) images and fluorescence polarized images (FPI) (parallel-, and perpendicular- polarization) were acquired in tandem on human colonic tissues. The results show that NIR fluorescence intensity of normal tissue is significantly higher than that of cancer tissue. The perpendicular-polarization image yields the highest diagnostic accuracy 93% compared to other imaging modes. This work demonstrates that Fluorescence polarization imaging (FPI) technique has great potential for cancer diagnosis and detection in the colon.