Grant: Collaborative Health Research Projects (NSERC partnered)

Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death world-wide. More than 1.3 million people die annually and the 5-year survival rates have improved only marginally in the last three decades. We propose to combine autofluorescence imaging and optical coherence tomography (OCT) to manage this disease through earlier detection and treatment. Autofluorescence imaging is a technique that uses blue light illumination in an endoscope to excite natural tissue fluorescence (a healthy green glow) in the lung. This technique has dramatically improved the early detection of lung cancer by identifying high-risk areas where biopsies should be collected. Although this method improves detection, a biopsy is still required to verify the presence or absence of a precancer. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a new imaging technique that can be used to study these high-risk tissue sites at high resolution without removing tissue (no biopsy required). It is the optical equivalent of ultrasound. It uses light waves instead of sound waves to build a high-resolution map of structures below the tissue surface. Our team was the first to use OCT in conjunction with autofluorescence bronchoscopy. We found that OCT does have promise for the differentiation of early lesions and for determining if the lesion has invaded. Over the last 10 years, we have made 1000's of quantitative measurements on surgical specimens (biopsies) removed from the lung. We believe that we can use these measurements to improve current OCT instruments to help identify precancerous lesions in the lung.