Quantifying fluorescent intensity signal from combined optical coherence tomography and near infrared fluorescence imaging

Barrett’s Esophagus (BE) is a common pre-cursor condition to esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC); the monitoring of which can facilitate the detection of dysplastic tissue, and the treatment of subsequent early stage EAC. Early detection of EAC improves survival rates significantly. Optical Coherence Tomography is a low coherence interferometric technique which produces depth scans of tissues. OCT provides morphological information, but lacks in specificity, and so can be combined with Near Infrared Fluorescence imaging, to also retrieve molecular information. Fluorescently labelled monoclonal antibodies can be administered in order to label specific tissues, which can then be imaged using this OCT-NIRF technique. Fluorescently labelled bevacizumab combined with OCT-NIRF imaging will highlight inflamed, dysplastic and pre-/ cancerous tissues, such as BE tissue. Here, a silicon elastomer phantoms are used to quantify the fluorescence intensity signal detected from a dilution of fluorescent bevacizumab: the fluorescent signal intensity is correlated as a function of fluorophore depth and concentration, and ′_Svalue of the phantom material.