Quantification of glucose diffusion in human lung tissues by using Fourier domain optical coherence tomography

In this study, we report permeability coefficients of 30% glucose diffusion by the optical coherence tomography signal slope (OCTSS) method in four kinds of human lung tissue in vitro: normal lung tissue, benign granulomatosis lung tissue, squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma tumor. To quantify the permeability coefficient of the agent, the monitored region was 80 μm thickness at a tissue depth of ca 230 μm from the surface. The permeability coefficients of 30% glucose from 10 independent experiments were averaged and found to be (1.35 ± 0.13) × 10(-5) cm s(-1) from the normal lung tissue, (1.78 ± 0.21) × 10(-5) cm s(-1) from the benign granulomatosis lung tissue, (2.88 ± 0.19) × 10(-5) cm s(-1) from the adenocarcinoma tumor and (3.53 ± 0.25) × 10(-5) cm s(-1) from the squamous cell carcinoma, respectively. It could be clearly seen that the permeability coefficients of 30% glucose increase ca 32%, 113% and 162% in the benign granulomatosis, adenocarcinoma tumor and squamous cell carcinoma of human lung tissue compared with that from the normal lung tissue, respectively. Therefore, we inferred from this pilot study that the OCT imaging is a feasible method to distinguish normal and cancer lung tissue.