With collaborators at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, UK, we have been using Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) to spatially map the refractive index of healthy and cancerous biopsy samples from the oesophagus.

Fig 1: Spatially refractive index maps of healthy and
cancerous mucosal tissue taken from the human oesophagus

We have observed a substantially higher refractive index in cancerous, compared to healthy mucosa. Significantly, the statistical distribution of refractive found in both tissue types, are well discriminated, providing clear contrast between healthy and diseased tissue.

Fig 2: Distributions of refractive index measured from biopsies of human
oesophageal muscosa, showing clear contrast between healthy and cancerous tissue

Related publications

• P H Tomlins, P Woolliams, C Hart, A Beaumont and M Tedaldi, 'Optical coherence refractometry', Opt. Lett. 33, 2272-2274 (2008)
• P H Tomlins and R K Wang, 'Matrix approach to quantitative refractive index analysis by Fourier domain optical coherence tomography', J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 23, 1897-1907 (2006)

For further information, please contact Matthew Tedaldi