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Background and Objective: The goal of this paper is to perform a comparative study of the capabilities of optical coherence tomography (OCT) and fluorescence spectroscopy for detection of neoplastic processes and malignant tumor borders in the uterine cervix and vulva, and to preliminarily analyze the advisability of using these two methods complementarily.Study Design/Materials and Methods:Using the two methods-fluorescence spectroscopy, which is based on the detection of biochemical changes in tissue, and optical coherence tomography that detects morphologic or structural tissue information-borders of neoplasia in the uterine cervix and vulva were determined. A parallel analysis of optical properties of tissue and histologic material taken from the center of tumor and the OCT-detected boundary was performed; the visual and optically detected borders of the pathological zone were compared. A total of 12 women with neoplasia in the uterine cervix and vulva were enrolled in this study.Results: First results of this study show that an optically detected demarcation line of cervical neoplasia is farther from the tumor focus by an average of 2 mm than a colposcopically determined border. It was verified that the OCT-detected borders morphologically coincided with the real histologic borders. The OCT and fluorescence spectroscopy yielded the same results in only some experiments. In several clinical cases, it was difficult to interpret OCT images (combination with scar changes in the uterine cervix) and fluorescence spectroscopy data (combination with inflammatory changes).Conclusions: Experimental data presented here show the capability of OCT imaging and fluorescence spectroscopy to detect borders of neoplastic processes in the uterine cervix and vulva more accurately than conventional colposcopy. The results of this study provide a rationale for using these optical techniques in combination as complementary objective methods of cancer diagnostics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]