A comparative evaluation of diffuse reflectance and Raman spectroscopy in the detection of cervical cancer. Issue 2 (1st March 2016) - Shaikh, Rubina
Abstract : Optical spectroscopic techniques show improved diagnostic accuracy for non‐invasive detection of cervical cancers. In this study, sensitivity and specificity of two in vivo modalities, i.e diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) and Raman spectroscopy (RS), were compared by utilizing spectra recorded from the same sites (67 tumor (T), 22 normal cervix (C), and 57 normal vagina (V)). Data was analysed using principal component – linear discriminant analysis (PC‐LDA), and validated using leave‐one‐out‐cross‐validation (LOOCV). Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value for classification between normal (N) and tumor (T) sites were 91%, 96%, 95% and 93%, respectively for RS and 85%, 95%, 93% and 88%, respectively for DRS. Even though DRS revealed slightly lower diagnostic accuracies, owing to its lower cost and portability, it was found to be more suited for cervical cancer screening in low resource settings. On the other hand, RS based devices could be ideal for screening patients with centralised facilities in developing countries. Abstract : This clinical study examines the relative merits of Raman and diffuse reflectance spectroscopy for in vivo detection of cervical cancer by processing the spectra recorded from the same sites in patients using principal component and linear discriminant analysis. Raman spectroscopy system that shows slightly improved diagnostic accuracy is more preferred in centralised facilities. But the advantages of affordability, ease of use and portability make the diffuse reflectance spectroscopy system more suited for community screening in low‐resource settings.