Ex vivo determination of glucose permeability and optical attenuation coefficient in normal and adenomatous human colon tissues using spectral domain optical coherence tomography.

Recent reports have suggested that spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) is a useful tool for quantifying the permeability of hyperosmotic agents in various tissues. We report our preliminary results on quantification of glucose diffusion and assessment of the optical attenuation change due to the diffusion of glucose in normal and adenomatous human colon tissues in vitro by using a SD-OCT and then calculated the permeability coefficients (PC) and optical attenuation coefficients (AC). The PC of a 30% aqueous solution of glucose was 3.37±0.23×10⁻⁶ cm/s in normal tissue and 5.65±0.16×10⁻⁶ cm/s in cancerous colon tissue. Optical AC in a normal colon ranged from 3.48±0.37 to 2.68±0.82  mm⁻¹ and was significantly lower than those seen in the cancerous tissue (8.48±0.95 to 3.16±0.69  mm⁻¹, p<0.05). The results suggest that quantitative measurements of using PC and AC from OCT images could be a potentially powerful method for colon cancer detection.