Patent ID: 8224426

Claim:
A method for assessing susceptibility for developing a pre-selected disease in a mammal, comprising: a) illuminating a volume of selected tissue of a mammal with light having wavelengths covering a pre-selected spectral range; b) detecting light transmitted through, or reflected from, said volume of selected tissue, and obtaining a spectrum of said detected light; c) representing the spectrum of detected light by a set of basis spectral components, an error term, and an associated scalar coefficient for each basis spectral component in said set, the set of basis spectral components including at least one basis spectral component, the associated scalar coefficient for each basis spectral component being calculated by minimizing the error term; and d) correlating the associated scalar coefficient for each basis spectral component with a pre-selected property of the selected tissue known to be indicative of susceptibility of the tissue for the pre-selected disease to obtain the susceptibility for the mammal to developing the pre-selected disease: wherein the set of basis spectral components of step (c) is obtained by the steps of: obtaining a range of values of the pre-selected property from a population cross section which is representative of the mammalian population at large, but who are not expressing the pre-selected disease; in each mammalian member of said population cross section obtaining at least one spectrum by illuminating a volume of selected tissue with light having wavelengths covering the pre-selected spectral range, and detecting light transmitted through, or reflected from, said volume of selected tissue; extracting common spectral elements from the at least one spectrum of each member of said population cross section and producing at least one set of component spectra from the extracted common spectral elements, the at least one set of component spectra including at least one component spectra; and identifying a set of component spectra which gives the highest predictive value for the pre-selected property of the selected tissue known to be indicative of susceptibility for the pre-selected disease; wherein said set of component spectra which gives the highest predictive value for the pre-selected property of the selected tissue known to be indicative of susceptibility for the pre-selected disease is used as the set of basis spectral components in step c).