Patent ID: 8694266

Claim:
A method of employing multimodal spectroscopy to classify pancreatic tissue in vivo comprising the steps of: transforming reflectance and fluorescence spectra for normal pancreatic tissue by varying the concentration of collagen in the tissue, mean size of cell nuclei, or both, to develop a photon-tissue interaction model including simulations of the reflectance and fluorescence spectra for adenocarcinoma and pancreatitis; illuminating pancreatic tissue having an unknown classification in vivo to produce a spectroscopic event from which steady-state reflectance, steady-state fluorescence, and time-resolved fluorescence signals may be obtained; collecting spectroscopic response data from the spectroscopic event, wherein the response data includes measurements derived from steady-state reflectance, steady-state fluorescence, and time-resolved fluorescence signals associated with the tissue; comparing the spectroscopic response data with the a photon-tissue interaction model for the reflectance and fluorescence spectra to extract tissue parameters from the measured data, wherein the tissue parameters include the concentration of collagen and mean size of cell nuclei in the illuminated pancreatic tissue, and a multi-exponential decay model of the time-resolved fluorescence in order to extract amplitudes and lifetimes from the measured data; and classifying the tissue as either normal, adenocarcinoma or pancreatitis based on the comparisons.