Validation of angle-resolved polarized light scattering spectroscopy as a diagnostic tool for pre-cancer detection

Light scattering spectroscopy has emerged as a valuable diagnostic tool for cancer diagnoses in the past ten years. The interaction of light with cellular structures brings out information about morphological changes accompanying malignancy at early stages. The virtue of this technique is to extract key morphological information such as size distribution of nucleus and submicron-sized particles with minimal data acquisition and model-based data analysis. This enables wide area screening and onsite analysis, critical to the clinical applications. The extracted information, however, strongly depends on the selection of the specific model of the cell/tissue scattering and on constraints from prior knowledge about the sample, leaving the validity of the information questionable. The main focus of this thesis work is to validate various models of cell/tissue scattering used in light scattering spectroscopy. Conventional intensity-based light scattering spectroscopy, which records intensity distribution at the angular plane, was set up to measure angular and wavelength distribution of scattered light in cell monolayers, cell suspensions and rat esophagus tissues for both forward and backward scattering. Morphological information was extracted from cell models such as the cell model based on Mie theory and the power-law model. At the same time, field-based microscopy was used to measure 3D refractive index distributions of single live cells and to provide intensity-based light scattering spectroscopy with a more realistic optical model of a cell.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Chemistry.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Kalashnikov, Maxim M

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael S. Feld.

• Chemistry.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/49744

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/49744