Morphological changes in tissue are highly correlated with progression of cancer. Such structural changes leadto uctuations of refractive index (RI) inside the tissue, which are random and exhibit self-similar properties.Depth distribution in RI of oral tissue samples were studied through Fourier domain low coherence interferom-etry. A halogen tungsten lamp was used as the source, and an Ocean Optics spectrometer was used for thecollection of interference spectra. The experimental system was calibrated using mica sheets of different thick-nesses, polystyrene microspheres and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Multifractal detrended uctuation analysis(MFDFA) were employed on interference spectra to study and quantify multifractality in depth-wise distributionof the RI in oral tissue sections. The derived multifractal parameters, namely the generalized Hurst exponent andthe width of the multifractal spectrum, showed quite significant differences among tissues having three differentgrades of cancer. The depth-wise variation of the refractive index showed an increase in multifractality withincreasing pathological grades of cancer.
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