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Updated: May 24, 2026
Probe-based Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy of the Urinary Tract: The Technique
Published on: January 10, 2013
A novel homogeneous irradiation fiber probe for whole bladder wall photodynamic therapy
Kozo Miyazaki1, Yuji Morimoto, Nobuhiro Nishiyama
1Division of Clinical Biotechnology, Center for Disease Biology and Integrative Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Background And Objective:
We designed and fabricated a novel fiber probe that homogeneously illuminates the urinary bladder cavity for photodynamic therapy (PDT) of bladder cancer, which is known to occur in multifocal areas and to proliferate diffusely in the bladder mucosa.
Study Design/Materials And Methods:
One end of a quartz multicore fiber was twisted and conically shaped, and the sharpened apex of the fiber end was rounded in order to provide light of which the fluence distribution approximates the three-dimensional shape of the bladder cavity of rats. The superiority of the developed fiber probe (homogenous irradiation fiber probe: HIFiP) to a control fiber with a flat cleaved end (CF) in Photofrin®-PDT using a rat orthotopic bladder cancer model was evaluated.
Results:
Percentage of irradiated area to the whole area of the mucosal surface of the bladder was 36% in the case of the CF, while it was 69% in the case of HIFiP (P = 0.04). A greater PDT effect was seen in rats with HIFiP-PDT, the volume of tumors (5.0 mm(3)) being less than half of that in the CF group (11.8 mm(3); P = 0.02).
Conclusions:
HIFiP succeeded in delivering light homogenously to a wide area of the bladder cavity, resulting in enhancement of the PDT effect on bladder cancer.
