A new optical method improves fluorescence guided diagnosis of bladder tumor in the outpatient department and reveals significant photo bleaching problems in established inpatients PDD techniques

摘要

Photo dynamic diagnosis (PDD) is a convenient and well-documented procedure for diagnosis of bladder cancer and tumours using endoscopic techniques. At present, this procedure is available only for routine use in an operating room (OR) and often with substantial photobleaching effects of the photosensitizer. We present a novel optical design of the endoscopic PDD procedure that allows the procedure to be performed in the outpatient department (OPD) and not only in the OR. Thereby, inpatient procedures lasting 1-2 days may be replaced by a few hours lasting procedure in the OPD. Urine blurs the fluorescence during PDD used in the OPD. Urine contains fluorescent metabolites that are excited by blue light giving an opaque green fluorescence confounding the desired red fluorescence (PDD) from the tumour tissue. Measurements from the clinical situation has shown that some systems for PPD based on blue light illumination (PDD mode) and white light illumination used for bladder tumour diagnosis and surgery suffers some inherent disadvantages, i.e., photo bleaching in white light that impairs the possibility for PDD as white light usually is used before the blue light for PDD. Based on spectroscopic observations of urine and the photoactive dye Protoporphyrin Ⅸ used in PDD a novel optical system for use with the cystoscope has been devised that solves the problem of green fluorescence from urine. This and the knowledge of photo-bleaching pitfalls in established systems make it possible to perform PDD of bladder tumours in the OPD and to improve PDD in the OR.