Accuracy of <i>In Vivo</i> Multimodal Optical Imaging for Detection of Oral Neoplasia

TLDR

Early detection of oral cancer is curable, yet survival remains low due to late‑stage diagnosis. The study aimed to improve early detection and treatment of oral cancer by developing a multimodal optical imaging system. The MMIS evaluates tissue in situ at macroscopic and microscopic scales. The MMIS correctly classified 98 % of normal sites and 95 % of moderate–severe dysplasia or cancer sites, achieved 35 % accuracy for mild dysplasia alone, yet showed 87 % correlation with molecular markers, supporting its potential to accurately detect neoplastic and premalignant oral lesions. Published in Cancer Prevention Research, 5(6):801–809, ©2012 AACR.

Abstract

Abstract If detected early, oral cancer is eminently curable. However, survival rates for oral cancer patients remain low, largely due to late-stage diagnosis and subsequent difficulty of treatment. To improve clinicians' ability to detect early disease and to treat advanced cancers, we developed a multimodal optical imaging system (MMIS) to evaluate tissue in situ, at macroscopic and microscopic scales. The MMIS was used to measure 100 anatomic sites in 30 patients, correctly classifying 98% of pathologically confirmed normal tissue sites, and 95% of sites graded as moderate dysplasia, severe dysplasia, or cancer. When used alone, MMIS classification accuracy was 35% for sites determined by pathology as mild dysplasia. However, MMIS measurements correlated with expression of candidate molecular markers in 87% of sites with mild dysplasia. These findings support the ability of noninvasive multimodal optical imaging to accurately identify neoplastic tissue and premalignant lesions. This in turn may have considerable impact on detection and treatment of patients with oral cancer and other epithelial malignancies. Cancer Prev Res; 5(6); 801–9. ©2012 AACR.