Development of a Novel Embedded Relay Lens Microscopic Hyperspectral Imaging System for Cancer Diagnosis: Use of the Mice with Oral Cancer to Be the Example

This paper develops a novel embedded relay lens microscopic hyperspectral imaging system (ERL-MHSI) with high spectral resolution (nominal spectral resolution of 2.8？nm) and spatial resolution (30？μm？×？10？μm) for cancer diagnosis. The ERL-MHSI system has transmittance and fluorescence mode. The transmittance can provide the morphological information for pathological diagnosis, and the fluorescence of cells or tissue can provide the characteristic signature for identification of normal and abnormal. In this work, the development of the ERL-MHSI system is discussed and the capability of the system is demonstrated by diagnosing early stage oral cancer of twenty mice in vitro. The best sensitivity for identifying normal cells and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) was 100%. The best specificity for identifying normal cells and SCC was 99%. The best sensitivity for identifying normal cells and dysplasia was 99%. The best specificity for identifying normal cells and dysplasia was 97%. This work also utilizes fractal dimension to analyze the morphological information and find the significant different values between normal and SCC. 1. Introduction The hyperspectral image (HSI) is capable of simultaneously presenting spectral and spatial information with high resolution. The spectral information provides the characteristic of objects, and the spatial information provides the morphological information of objects. The combination allows for spectral analysis of each pixel on the acquired image and assists statistical image analysis of the acquired image. Therefore, the HSI has been widely applied to many areas, such as remote sensing, digital archives, biomedical inspection, and so on [1]. In the biomedical inspection, the HSI is a useful modality in diagnostic medicine including applications for retinal image [2, 3], skin diagnosis [4–7], tumor microvasculature change, and cancer diagnosis [8–10]. Biological tissues have optical characteristics reflecting the chemical characteristics to provide information with regard to the health or disease of tissue. Because the cancer is the high mortality and morbidity disease, the physician hopes to find the characteristic of cancer in the early stage. The most accurate way to diagnose cancer relies on pathologist to study biopsy under the optical microscopic image. Although the optical microscope provides the direct image of the biopsy and is the most important instrument to research pathological change of cancer cell, the optical microscope still has the limitations. The interaction between light and the object changes the