Monitoring Changes in Cell Structures with OCT Should Help in Treating Cancer

The technique, called optical coherence tomography (OCT), is an increasingly popular method for looking beneath the surface of specific materials, notably human tissue. It is higher resolution and much quicker than techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or ultrasound, with no ionizing radiation, making it ideal for detecting changes in tissue structure which can indicate the early stages of cancer.

However, creating such images requires high precision, and any inaccuracy can lead to incorrect suppositions about cell disruption. This can mean missing opportunities for early, potentially life-saving treatment.

New technology, developed by scientists from the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL; Teddington, UK), called a "point-spread phantom,” should eliminate the risk of such errors. The phantoms are translucent cylinders of resin containing specially arranged particles designed to reflect light in a very specific way. By viewing the phantom with an OCT machine and analyzing the image with NPL software, users can be certain the machine is producing accurate images, which they can rely on for important medical decisions.

These phantoms will also allow manufacturers of OCT technology to meet the necessary standards to guarantee to hospitals that their machines are sufficiently accurate. This will help speed the marketing of products using this important new technology, and assure hospitals of their ongoing effectiveness.

Michelson Diagnostics (Orpington, Kent, UK) is the first UK company to use NPL's phantoms to validate the accuracy of their machines. CEO John Holmes said, "We developed breakthrough technology for imaging living tissue and for detecting diseases, but we needed to validate our performance claims, to provide customers with greater confidence in them. NPL's phantoms and analysis have enabled us to validate our claims beyond doubt, thereby demonstrating the superiority of our scanners and giving us the edge over our competitors. We expect that this validation will give OCT technology the backing it needs to become standard in hospitals around the world, and thereby make an important progression in the battle against cancer.”

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National Physical Laboratory