Cancer Detection with Depth Resolution Using Scattering of Circularly Polarized Light

Depolarization of circularly polarized light scattered from biological tissues provides valuable information for detecting cancer tissues concealed in healthy tissues. Experimentally, we demonstrated the identification of cancerous tissues in sliced biological tissues using this technique. Also, the depth profile of the tissue can be obtained by using the characteristic that the sampling depth depends on the detection angle. We computationally investigated the quantitative measurement of tumor invasion depth in early gastric cancer using the Monte Carlo method. These results indicates the feasibility of cancer detection and quantitative estimation of its progression stage in vivo using this technique.