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

Claim 13:
14. An instrument for imaging a region of tissue to define margins of a tumor in the region, the instrument comprising:
an illuminator for illuminating the region with at least two wavelengths of light;
an imaging detector for generating images of the region based upon the at least two wavelengths of light; and
a controller connected to the imaging detector for receiving and storing the images, and for creating a spectrally-encoded image to exclude effects of background, uneven pigmentation and vascularization for visualizing a collagen structure of the region of the tissue so that disruption of the collagen structure caused by the tumor is determined and, in turn, the margins of the tumor are determined,
wherein each of the images generated by the imaging detector includes a respective set of pixels, and wherein the controller is configured to create the spectrally-encode image by: (i) multiplying a cross-polarized image of a first wavelength by a first value to produce a first term, (ii) adding a cross-polarized image of 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 first wavelength and a mean pixel value of the cross-polarized image of the second wavelength;
wherein the second value is a normalizing value calculated from a mean pixel value of the cross-polarized image of the second wavelength and a mean pixel value of a subset of pixels of the cross-polarized image of the second wavelength, the subset corresponding to a non-tumor sub-region;
wherein the at least 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.