Hyperspectral video endoscope for intra-surgery tissue classification using auto-fluorescence and reflectance spectroscopy

This paper presents a hyper-spectral video endoscopy system which utilizes a combination of auto-fluorescence imaging and white-light reflectance spectroscopy for intra-surgery tissue classification. The results of the first clinical study consisting of 59 cases of otolaryngoscopic examinations and thorax surgeries are discussed in this paper. The main focus of this application is the detection of tumor tissue, although hyper-spectral video endoscopy is not limited to cancer detection. The results show that hyper-spectral video endoscopy exhibits a large potential to become an important imaging technology for medical imaging devices that provide additional diagnostic information about the tissue under investigation.