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Kidney cancer is a kind of high mortality cancer because of the difficulty in early diagnosis and the high metastatic dissemination in treatments. The surgical resection of tumors is the most effective treatment for renal cancer patients. However, precise assessment of tumor margins is a challenge during surgical resection. The objective of this study is to demonstrate an optical imaging tool in precisely distinguishing kidney tumor borders and identifying tumor zones from normal tissues to assist surgeons in accurately resecting tumors from kidneys during the surgery. 30 samples from six human kidneys were imaged using polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT). Cross-sectional, enface, and spatial information of kidney samples were obtained for microenvironment reconstruction. Polarization parameters (phase retardation, optic axis direction, and degree of polarization uniformity (DOPU) and Stokes parameters (Q, U, and V) were utilized for multiparameter analysis. To verify the detection accuracy of PS-OCT, H&E histology staining and dice-coefficient were utilized to quantify the performance of PS-OCT in identifying tumor borders and regions. In this study, tumor borders were clearly identified by PS-OCT imaging, which outperformed the conventional intensity-based OCT. With H&E histological staining as golden standard, PS-OCT precisely identified the tumor regions and tissue distributions at different locations and different depths based on polarization and Stokes parameters. Compared to the traditional attenuation coefficient quantification method, PS-OCT demonstrated enhanced contrast of tissue characteristics between normal and cancerous tissues due to the birefringence effects. Our results demonstrated that PS-OCT was promising to provide imaging guidance for the surgical resection of kidney tumors and had the potential to be used for other human kidney surgeries in clinics such as renal biopsy. 

Objective: Multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTs) are indispensable models for evaluating drug efficacy for precision cancer therapeutic strategies as well as for repurposing FDA-approved drugs for ovarian cancer. However, current imaging techniques cannot provide effective monitoring of pathological responses due to shallow penetration and experimentally operative destruction. We plan to utilize a noninvasive optical imaging tool to achieve in vivo longitudinal monitoring of the growth of MCTs and therapeutic responses to repurpose three FDA-approved drugs for ovarian cancer therapy. Methods: A swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) system was used to monitor the volume growth of MCTs over 11 days. Three inhibitors of 2-Methoxyestradiol (2-ME), AZD1208, and R-Ketorolac (R-keto) with concentrations of 1, 10, and 25 µM were employed to treat ovarian MCTs on day 5. Three-dimensional (3D), intrinsic optical attenuation contrast, and degree of uniformity were applied to analyze the therapeutic effect of these inhibitors on ovarian MCTs. Results: We found that 2-ME, AZD1208, and R-keto with concentration of 10 and 25 µM significantly inhibited the volume growth of ovarian MCTs. There was no effect to necrotic tissues from all concentrations of 2-ME, AZD1208, and R-keto inhibitors from our OCT results. 2-ME and AZD1208 inhibited the growth of high uniformity tissues within MCTs and higher concentrations provided more significant inhibitory effects. Conclusion: Our results indicated that OCT was capable and reliable to monitor the therapeutic effect of inhibitors to ovarian MCTs and it can be used for the rapid characterization of novel therapeutics for ovarian cancers in the future.