Abstract
The use of optical fibers that are transparent in the mid-infrared region (IR) allow measurements to be made in the attenuated total reflectance (ATR)-mode and also allow absorption measurements to be carried out at a remote location. The IR fiber contacts a sample with characteristic absorption lines; thereby, the total transmission of the fiber and the sample will decrease at these lines. This method can be used to determine the absorption of a sample in a nondestructive manner. It has been found that normal tissue exhibits quite different absorption spectra from diseased tissue and each diseased state of biological tissue has its own characteristic IR spectral pattern. In this paper, we report our efforts to develop a fiber-optic infrared method to differentiate between malignant and healthy tissue in vivo. It presents the technical design of the laboratory setup and the results of developments made, together with experiments carried out on melanoma tumors in mice tissue. Silver halide fibers were used for the ATR measurements on tumor specimens. Further results have been compared with detailed measurements carried out with an FTIR-microscope and thin tissue sections in the wave number region 4000-900 cm-1. The results indicate that IR spectroscopy can be a useful tool for biodiagnostics. A natural progression of the fiber optic method described would be its use in endoscopic applications.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 96-105 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Laser Physics |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| State | Published - Jan 2003 |
