Abstract

A high spectral contrast is expected to be very important when laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) is employed for cancer diagnosis. We developed a LIF optical fiber sensor to achieve a very high spectral contrast between normal and malignant tissues. A comprehensive experimental investigation was carried out to study the role of two critically important parameters for sensor design, namely, the excitation–collection geometry and the excitation wavelength, and their effect on the autofluorescence spectral contrast. An optimum sensing configuration was determined in order to enhance the small, but consistent, spectral difference between the normal and the malignant tissue for improving the accuracy of LIF-based cancer diagnosis. With the optimum sensor configuration, we realized a spectral contrast of more than 22 times between normal and malignant tissue sample spectra.

© 2008 Optical Society of America

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