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Photodiagnostics and Luminescence Diagnostics of Cancer

Publication at Faculty of Mathematics and Physics |
2014

Abstract

Luminescence spectroscopy gains attention as a tool for medical diagnosis, since it can provide prompt diagnostic results at low cost with minimal or none at all invasiveness. Photosensitizers, fluorescent drugs for photodynamic therapy selectively uptaken in diseased tissues, enable identification and demarcation of lesions thanks to its intense emission, which is easy to detect.

However, the attention turns towards employment of tissue autofluorescence to distinguish between healthy and diseased tissues. Autofluorescence requires no extrinsic drugs as it utilizes emission of naturally occurring cofactors.

This offers another advantage, as the emission of cofactors reveals information about metabolic state of the cells. However, the autofluorescence of tissues is rather weak and emission of particular cofactors often overlaps.

This requires employment of time-resolved detection, which offers excellent sensitivity and ability to distinguish emission from individual fluorophores based on their differing lifetimes. Moreover, the lifetimes may reflect binding state of the cofactors and thus provide more detailed information about their biologic functions.

This paper reviews the main principles of luminescence diagnosis of tissues and introduces newly designed multichannel set-up for simultaneous time-resolved detection of emission up to four naturally occurring intrinsic fluorophores such as NADP, FAD, Protoporphyrin IX, and collagen or elastin which provide information about metabolic and morphological properties of diagnosed tissues. The very preliminary results obtained on fluorescence standards are presented.