Diagnosis of disease is often accomplished via evaluation of tissue biopsy samples.  However, misdiagnosis or inability to make a diagnosis is often encountered due to improper selection of tissue.  This is costly to the patient and the health-care system as a whole. The novel, confocal microendoscope allows cellular-level imaging (optical biopsy) of tissues in regions that are accessible by endoscopes such as, lungs, bladder, cervix, uterus, colon, peritoneum and ovaries. This aids physicians in the diagnosis of pathologies in situ and could, in the ideal case, replace tissue extraction biopsy.  At the very least, this capability could improve the selection of tissue for biopsy and increase the accuracy of diagnosis.

In this project, images of human ovaries (ex vivo) obtained with the confocal microendoscope imaging system were analyzed to detect pathologies.

Here are some examples of confocal microendoscopic images of normal human ovaries:

Examples of Abnormal Human Ovaries:

This work was a collaborative effort with Prof. Art Gmitro in the Dept. of Radiology.

Publications:

1. Saurabh Srivastava, Jeffrey J. Rodriguez, Andrew R. Rouse, Molly A. Brewer, and Arthur F. Gmitro, "Computer-Aided Identification of Ovarian Cancer in Confocal Microendoscope Images," Journal of Biomedical Optics, vol. 13, no. 2, March/April 2008, pp. 024021-1 to 024021-13. [ PDF ]
   
   
2. Saurabh Srivastava, Jeffrey J. Rodriguez, Andrew R. Rouse, Molly A. Brewer, and Arthur F. Gmitro, "Automated Texture-Based Identification of Ovarian Cancer in Confocal Microendoscope Images," in Three-Dimensional and Multidimensional Microscopy: Image Processing and Acquisition XII, Jose-Angel Conchello, Carol J. Cogswell, and Tony Wilson, Eds., Proc. of SPIE, vol. 5701, presented at BiOS 2005 at Photonics West 2005, San Jose, CA, Jan. 22-27, 2005. [ PDF ]
   
   
3. Saurabh Srivastava, Jeffrey J. Rodriguez, Andrew R. Rouse, Molly A. Brewer, and Arthur F. Gmitro, "Analysis of Confocal Microendoscope Images for Automatic Detection of Ovarian Cancer," 2005 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Image Processing, Genoa, Italy, Sept. 11-14, 2005, vol. 1, pp. 1113-1116. [ PDF ]