Grant: Project Grant

Early detection is crucial to increasing the survival rate of lung cancer and reduces the cost of treatment. If lung cancer can be detected early in the pre-invasive stage, the 5-year survival is >90%. However, with conventional diagnostic techniques, lung cancer is generally asymptomatic until it has reached an advanced stage, where the treatment outcome is poor. In recent years, great progresses have been made for improving central airway lung cancer detection due to the development of new optical technologies for endoscopy. However, optical technologies have just started being applied to the peripheral lung due to technical challenges. Periphery lung lesions are usually spotted by X-ray CT as nodules on the images. The identified nodules are then biopsied to determine if a nodule is malignant or benign, either by a transthoracic needle aspiration or by using forceps through a bronchoscopy procedure. Bronchoscopy biopsy is preferred because of its lower complication rate for pneumothorax, thanks to the minimal invasiveness of the procedure. However, in general the biopsy of nodules is associated with very high false positive rate. We are interested in developing optical technologies for improving peripheral lung cancer detection through bronchoscope. In this project, we will focus on an optical technology called Laser-Raman spectroscopy (LRS). LRS probes molecular vibrations through inelastic scattering of laser light and gives very specific, fingerprint-like spectral features and has high accuracy for differentiation between malignant and benign lesions. We hope to develop this laser probe into a new clinical tool for improving peripheral lung cancer detection in terms of reduced false positive biopsies and improved diagnostic sensitivity and yield. This way more early cancerous lesions will be detected. Coupled with earlier treatment it will greatly improve the survival rate of lung cancer patients and also bring significant cost saving to the healthcare system.