Endoscopic Capillary Oximetry for Tumor Diagnosis in Head and Neck Cancer

Endoscopy is a standard part of the evaluation of patients with head and neck cancer used for determining the extent of tumor involvement. However, not all areas involved by tumor are apparent visually. Preliminary results indicate that compared with normal tissues, tumors have abnormal levels of capillary oxygenation. The purpose of this study is to determine the ability of non-pulsatile visible light tissue oxygen monitoring to differentiate normal and tumor tissue based on capillary oxygenation during endoscopy Should this be possible, this method could be used to mark tumor extent and invasion, even when that invasion is up to 5mm blow the tissue surface.