Abstract

An in vivo tumor-bearing rat model was used to evaluate the diagnostic capabilities of a potential optical biopsy apparatus. Thirty-two Lobund Wistar rats were inoculated with 10⁵ cells of viable Pollard rat prostate adenocarcinoma. This model¹ was chosen because it is known to metastasize uniformly and spontaneously from extra vascular sites only through ipsilateral lymphatic charnels. Animals were injected intravenously with 0.75 mg/kg solutions of Photofrin II 48 hours prior to diagnostic measurements. A schematic setup of the optical diagnostic apparatus is shown in Fig. 1. It utilizes (1) a highly efficient fiber-optic xenon light source, (2) a wavelength selection and filtering unit for generating the excitation light of appropriate bandwidth and spectral purity, (3) a contact fiber-optic probe consisting of five randomly mixed fiber optic bundles, each composed of 50 pm diameter, 0.2 NA fibers (one for illumination and four for detection), (4) a detection system utilizing photo multipliers and filters to measure the intensity in selected wavelength bands, and (5) a data acquisition system for controlling the data acquisition and processing of the signals.

© 1993 Optical Society of America