Noninvasive quantitative assessment of oral submucosal fibrosis in vivo using optical coherence elastography

Optical coherence elastography (OCE) is a noninvasive imaging technique with high sensitivity and resolution that can be used for mucocutaneous imaging. Oral submucous fibrosis (OSF) is a chronic disease that has a tendency to become cancerous. Nevertheless, there are a few noninvasive methods for early detection of OSF.

A piezoelectric transducer-based (PZT) OCE technique was devised to noninvasively assess the structural and mechanical properties of mucosa in healthy and fibrotic oral diseases.

We first validated the accuracy and reliability of the OCE system for tissue elasticity detection by means of a heterogeneous agar model. The structural and biomechanical characteristics of the regional tissues were then evaluated by examining the oral mucosa of both healthy and fibrotic SD rats.

Normal and fibrotic tissue stiffness differed significantly ( $p<0.05$ ). The elastic wave velocity was $6.44\pm 0.30m/s$ in the normal group and $14.2\pm 0.91m/s$ in the fibrotic group. After converting the results to Young's modulus, the stiffness of the healthy buccal tissues and the fibrotic buccal tissues were $130.71\pm 12.01$ and $636.15\pm 79.17\mathrm{kPa}$ , respectively ( $p<0.05$ ).

OCE can differentiate between normal and fibrotic tissue based on elasticity and optical properties. Healthy buccal tissues were softer than diseased tissues.