J Biomed Opt. 2014 May;19(5):057011. doi: 10.1117/1.JBO.19.5.057011.

Cervical cancer detection by time-resolved spectra of blood components.

Kalaivani R¹, Masilamani V², AlSalhi MS², Devanesan S³, Ramamurthy P⁴, Palled SR⁵, Ganesh KM⁵.

Author information

1: King Saud University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Riyadh 11451, Kingdom of Saudi ArabiabUniversity of Madras, Department of Nuclear Physics, Chennai 600005, India.
2: King Saud University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Riyadh 11451, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
3: King Saud University, Research Chair, Laser Diagnosis of Cancers, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
4: University of Madras, National Centre for Ultrafast Processes, Taramani Campus, Chennai 600113, India.
5: Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology, Bangalore 560029, India.

Abstract

Fluorescence spectral techniques are very sensitive, and hence they are gaining importance in cancer detection. The biomarkers indicative of cancer could be identified and quantified by spectral or time domain fluorescence spectroscopy. The results of an investigation of time-resolved spectra of cellular components of blood obtained from cervical cancer patients and normal controls are given. The cancer indicative biomarker in this paper is porphyrin; it has a fluorescence decay time of 60% more in samples of cancer patients than those of normal controls. Based on such measurements, a randomized set comprising samples from cancer patients and controls (N=27 in total) could be classified with sensitivity (92%) and specificity (86%).