Differentiating normal and cancerous stroma by nonlinear spectral imaging

In this work, we demonstrate the use of the nonlinear spectral imaging technique in differentiating normal and cancerous stroma. It was found that nonlinear spectral images from normal and neoplastic stroma exhibit different organization features. Combining the image-guided spectral analysis function and the extracting channels function, some information on the biomorphology and biochemistry of tissue can be acquired, including alteration in proportions of matrix molecules, collagen-related changes, elastin-related changes. These results give insight into the stromal changes associated with cancer progression and provide substantial potential to be applied in vivo the clinical diagnosis of epithelial precancers and cancers.