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

Claim 0:
1. An instrument for imaging a region of tissue including a tumor, the instrument comprising:
an illuminator for illuminating the region with two wavelengths of light;
an imaging detector for generating images of the region based upon the two wavelengths of light; and
a controller connected to the imaging detector for receiving and storing the images, and for creating spectrally-encoded images that illustrate a collagen structure of the region of the tissue,
wherein each of the images generated by the imaging detector includes a respective set of pixels, and wherein creating spectrally-encoded images includes (i) multiplying a cross-polarized image of the region based on a first wavelength by a first value to produce a first term, (ii) adding a cross-polarized image of the region based on a second wavelength 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 region based on the first wavelength and a mean pixel value of the cross-polarized image of the region based on the second wavelength;
wherein the second value is a normalizing value calculated from a mean pixel value of the cross-polarized image of the region based on the second wavelength and a mean pixel value of a subset of pixels of the cross-polarized image of the region based on the second wavelength, the subset corresponding to a non-tumor sub-region;
wherein the two 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.