Ovarian cancer has the highest mortality rate among the gynecologic cancers, and it goes undetected because adequate technology does not exist to detect preinvasive or early stage disease. Fluorescence spectroscopy of urine may provide a cost-effective tool to improve precancer detection. This study describes initial investigation of the potential of intrinsic urine fluorescence spectra for detecting early ovarian cancer. Using the Xenon arc lamp to irradiate the urine from ovarian cancer, cervical carcinoma groups and healthy donors, we obtained fluorescence emission spectra. The three groups of samples show different emission spectra peak and fluorescence intensity. Ovarian cancer group has the largest displacement of maximum spectra peak at 380-400nm excitation wavelength. And the fluorescence intensity from ovarian cancer group is significantly higher with the healthy donors and cervical carcinoma group in comparison at the short wave excitation region of 320-360nm, while cervical carcinoma group has higher fluorescence intensity than ovarian cancer group at 380-500nm excitation. Characteristic fluorescence mechanism was studied through comparison of fluorescence spectra and software fitting image. Fluorescence spectra at 440nm excitation is found to be perfectly lorentzian fitted by three characteristic fluorescence peaks, which are originated form coproporphyrin, riboflavin and p-hydroxyphenol derivatives existing in the urine.

Date Published: 8 January 2008
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 6826, Optics in Health Care and Biomedical Optics III, 68262O (8 January 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.756498

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6826:
Optics in Health Care and Biomedical Optics III
Xingde Li; Qingming Luo; Ying Gu M.D., Editor(s)