Hyperspectral Imaging for In-Vivo/Ex-Vivo Tissue Analysis of Human Brain Cancer

Accurate identification of tumor boundaries during brain cancer surgery determines the quality of life of the patient. Different intraoperative guidance tools are currently employed during the resection tumor but having several limitations. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is arising as a label-free and non-ionizing technique that could assist neurosurgeons during surgical procedures. In this paper, an analysis between in-vivo and ex-vivo human brain tumor samples using HSI has been performed to evaluate the correlation between both types of samples. Spectral ratios of the oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin were employed to distinguish between normal tissue, tumor tissue and blood vessels. A database composed by seven in-vivo and fourteen ex-vivo hyperspectral images obtained from seven different patients diagnosed with glioblastoma Grade IV, metastatic secondary breast cancer, meningioma Grade I and II, and astrocytoma (glioma) Grade II. 44,964 pixels labeled pixels were employed in this work. The proposed method achieved discrimination between different tissue types using the proposed spectral ratio. Comparison between in-vivo and ex-vivo samples indicated that ex-vivo samples generate higher hemoglobin ratios. Moreover, vascular enhanced maps were generated using the spectral ratio, targeting real-time intraoperative surgical assistance.