At the time of the biopsy, the physician can't see those changes. There hasn't been anything like it before. The optical technique called LSS has long been used to study the size and shape of small spheres such as water droplets. In this case, the method is applied to the cell's spheroid nucleus. Physics theory predicts that scattered light undergoes small but significant variations in spectrum, or color, when bouncing back from spheres of a certain size and refractive index.
Light is shined through the probe onto the patient's epithelial tissue.
The probe collects the light that bounces back and analyzes its colors. The color content is then used to extract diagnostic information. Gurjar reported that in clinical tests, the probe accurately distinguished pre-cancerous tissue in the colon and esophagus. For each color of light, an electronic camera records a pair of images of the reflected light in two separate polarizations. The two images are then subtracted, which cuts out scattered background light and leaves behind only images relating to the cell nuclei.