Abstract

While initially confined to the epidermis, squamous cell carcinoma can eventually penetrate into the underlying tissue if not diagnosed early and treated. The noninvasive early detection of the carcinoma is important to achieve a complete treatment of the disease. Of the various non-invasive optical techniques, the synchronous fluorescence (SF) technique is considered to provide a simplified spectral profile with more sharp spectral signatures of the endogenous fluorophores in complex systems. The potential use of the SF technique in the characterization of the sequential tissue transformation in 7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene-12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (DMBA-TPA)-induced mouse skin tumor model in conjunction with simple statistical analysis is explored. The SF spectra show distinct differences during the earlier weeks of the tumor-induction period. Intensity ratio variables are calculated and used in three discriminant analyses. All the discriminant analyses show better classification results with accuracy greater than 80%. From the observed differences in the spectral characteristics and the ratio variables that resulted in better classification between groups, it is concluded that tryptophan, collagen, and NADH are the key fluorophores that undergo changes during tissue transformation process and hence they can be targeted as tumor markers to diagnose normal from abnormal tissues using the SF technique.