The Univ. of British Columbia, Canada.
Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, Canada.
J Biomed Opt. 2021 Mar;26(3). doi: 10.1117/1.JBO.26.3.035001.
Management of skin cancer worldwide is often a challenge of scale, in that the number of potential cases presented outweighs the resources available to detect and treat skin cancer.
This project aims to develop a polarimetry probe to create an accessible skin cancer detection tool.
An optical probe was developed to perform bulk tissue Stokes polarimetry, a technique in which a laser of known polarization illuminates a target, and the altered polarization state of the backscattered light is measured. Typically, measuring a polarization state requires four sequential measurements with different orientations of polarization filters; however, this probe contains four spatially separated detectors to take four measurements in one shot. The probe was designed to perform at a lower cost and higher speed than conventional polarimetry methods. The probe uses photodiodes and linear and circular film polarizing filters as detectors, and a low-coherence laser diode as its illumination source. The probe design takes advantage of the statistical uniformity of the polarization speckle field formed at the detection area.
Tests of each probe component, and the complete system put together, were performed to evaluate error and confirm the probe's performance despite its low-cost components. This probe's potential is demonstrated in a pilot clinical study on 71 skin lesions. The degree of polarization was found to be a factor by which malignant melanoma could be separated from other types of skin lesions.
全球范围内的皮肤癌管理常常面临规模挑战，因为呈现的潜在病例数量超过了可用于检测和治疗皮肤癌的资源。
本项目旨在开发一种偏振光探头，以创建一种易于使用的皮肤癌检测工具。
开发了一种光学探头来进行体组织斯托克斯偏振测量，该技术中，已知偏振的激光照射目标，然后测量背散射光的偏振状态变化。通常，测量偏振状态需要进行四次具有不同偏振滤光器取向的连续测量；然而，该探头包含四个空间分离的探测器，可在一次拍摄中进行四次测量。该探头旨在以比传统偏振测量方法更低的成本和更高的速度运行。探头使用光电二极管以及线性和圆形薄膜偏振滤光片作为探测器，并使用低相干激光二极管作为照明源。探头设计利用在检测区域形成的偏振斑纹场的统计均匀性。
对每个探头组件以及组合在一起的完整系统进行了测试，以评估误差并确认尽管使用了低成本组件，但探头的性能。该探头的潜力在对 71 个皮肤病变的初步临床研究中得到了证明。偏振度被发现是恶性黑色素瘤与其他类型皮肤病变区分的一个因素。
