Patent ID: 11944450
Assignee: UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS
Field: Medical technology (Instruments)
Classification: CPC A  G | IPC A

Claim 4:
5. An instrument for imaging a region of tissue having a tumor to minimize an optical effect of melanin and hemoglobin, the instrument comprising:
an illuminator for illuminating the region with a first wavelength of light and a second wavelength of light;
an imaging detector for generating raw images of the region based upon the first wavelength of light and the second wavelength of light;
a polarizer for creating cross-polarized images; and
a controller connected to the imaging detector for receiving and storing the images, the controller being operative to spectrally encode a first cross-polarized raw image at the first wavelength of light with a second cross-polarized raw image at the second wavelength of light to create a corrected image,
wherein each of the images generated by the imaging detector includes a respective set of pixels, and wherein the controller is configured to spectrally encode the images by: (i) multiplying a cross-polarized image of a first wavelength of light by a first value to produce a first term, (ii) adding a cross-polarized image of a second wavelength of light to the first term to produce a combined image, and (iii) adding a second value to the combined image to produce the spectrally-encoded image,
wherein the first value is a normalizing value calculated from a mean pixel value of the cross-polarized image of the first wavelength of light and a mean pixel value of the cross-polarized image of the second wavelength of light;
wherein the second value is a normalizing value calculated from a mean pixel value of the cross-polarized image of the second wavelength of light and a mean pixel value of a subset of pixels of the cross-polarized image of the second wavelength of light, the subset corresponding to a non-tumor sub-region;
wherein the first and second wavelengths of light are selected from the group consisting of: approximately 440 nm light; approximately 550 nm light; approximately 590 nm light; approximately 640 nm light; light in a range of 410 nm to 440 nm; light in a range of 570 nm to 590 nm; and light in a range of 640-730 nm.