Oral cancer is hard do discover. 2/3 of cases are diagnosed in advanced stages and new techniques are required.

1. A NOVEL LOW-COST
MINIATURE PROBE FOR
ORAL DIAGNOSIS
Thair Takesh, Afarin Anbarani, Jessica Ho, Vania Firmalino,
Petra Wilder-Smith
Beckman Laser Institute University of California, Irvine
Ron Liang: College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson

2. Background
• More than 526,481 incident cases annually.
• 6th most lethal form of cancer.
• 150,000 new cases and >10,000 deaths annually in US.
• Advanced lesions outnumbered localized lesions more than 2:1 of all
oral cancers
• Five-year survival rate is 75%, 16% for those with metastasis.
• Clinical problems: Specialist, Invasive with functional and esthetic
implications, sampling, Field cancerization, Poor patient compliance
• Gold standard treatment is surgical biopsy.
• New techniques are required.

3. Goals
(1) Design and construct a low cost mini-probe for smart
phones that combines high resolutionpolarized white
light images (pWLI) and auto fluorescence imaging
(AFI).
(2) Test probe design, ergonomics and functionality .

4. Materials and Methods
Imaging Probe
Optical concept of the proposed mobile phone imaging device for
oral cancer screening. All components in black are built-in
components in mobile phone, others inside the red box are
components in the intra oral imaging probe.

5. Materials and Methods
• 15 human subjects in full compliance with UCI IRB-
approved protocol 2002-2805.
• 10 subjects with healthy oral mucosa and 5 subjects with
leukoplakia.
• 6 standard oral sites imaged in each subject.
• 3 dual-modality images recorded for each site.

6. Materials and Methods
• Clinicians and subjects evaluated the device’s
– ease and comfort of use
– size and shape-compatibility with the mouth
– weight
– imaging speed
– clarity and color of images
– resolution and magnification
– detection of differences between healthy and diseased
oral mucosa

7. Results
High-resolution pWLI mapped mucosal color, texture and
vascularity at levels of high resolution.

8. ResultsAFI images of healthy oral tissues showed a characteristic
strong green AFI signal.

9. Results
AFI images of pathological oral mucosa showed areas of dark
reddish-brown signal.

10. Results
• AFI signal differed minimally between subjects for any 1
specific imaging location.
• AFI signal differed in intensity and variability between
each of the 6 imaging locations in the same subject and
between subjects.

11. Conclusion• Effective design and appropriate for clinical use.
• recorded data in subjects with healthy and pathological oral mucosa.
• Observed site specific AFI characteristics.
• Healthy tissues were differentiated from pathological ones.
• Next steps:
- Re optimize intra-oral imaging probe.
- Developing image processing software.
- Clinical validation studies.
• We gratefully acknowledge funding from NIH: award # 1UH2EB022623-01

12. Thank you