Differential diagnosis of human bladder mucosa pathologies in vivo with cross-polarization optical coherence tomography.

Quantitative image analysis and parameter extraction using a specific implementation of polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (OCT) provides differential diagnosis of mucosal pathologies in in-vivo human bladders. We introduce a cross-polarization (CP) OCT image metric called Integral Depolarization Factor (IDF) to enable automatic diagnosis of bladder conditions (assessment the functional state of collagen fibers). IDF-based diagnostic accuracy of identification of the severe fibrosis of normal bladder mucosa is 79%; recurrence of carcinoma on the post-operative scar is 97%; and differentiation between neoplasia and acute inflammation is 75%. The promising potential of CP OCT combined with image analysis in human urology is thus demonstrated in vivo.