Search

Thermography is a physiological look and pictorial recording of the skin temperature which has significant contribution in detecting breast cancer, since 1957. Thermography is a potential tool to reduce breast cancer mortality by detecting at an early stage. The biggest advantage of this technique is non-invasive and innocuous. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved (in the year 1982) thermography as an adjuvant screening tool for breast cancer. Accuracy of the screening to detect cancer early highly depends on interpretation of the thermograms. Progression of this technique as diagnostic tool is very less due to lack of standardization in imaging protocol worldwide and interpretation system. Interpreting the image is the key to know the quality of subject’s health. Interpretation of thermograms for differentiating benign and malignant neoplasm is crucial in identifying features in the image towards the diagnosis. To address the lack of standardization in interpretation of breast images taken from thermography and to ensure uniformity of the report, classification or grading or scoring system is necessary. In this paper authors have proposed a new innovative Indian thermal grading/scoring scale based on quantitative and qualitative parameters including feature analysis, temperature difference and risk factors. The grading/scoring scale has been successfully applied to 75 cases and validated using concurrent sonography and mammography reports. This paper also provide statistically analyzes of the thermal grading/scoring scale for breast thermograms to classify normal, fibroadenoma and cancer subjects for the above mentioned cases.

Objective: To screen the selected phytochemicals against diabetes by docking studies in comparison with experimental analysis. Methods: Ethanol crude extract was obtained from the leaves of C.intybus and its chemical compounds were identified using GC- MS. Docking studies were carried out for selected phytochemicals to find the binding affinity and H-bond interaction using Schrodinger suite. Dynamic simulations were carried out for protein-ligand complex up to 50ns using desmond OPLS AA forcefield and α- Amylase and α- Glucosidase assay were carried for the ethanolic extract to infer its inhibition. Results: Four compounds were chosen for induced fit docking based on the docking score and glide energy obtained from GLIDE-XP docking. The compounds were docked with the protein target human aldose reductase (PDB ID: 2FZD) for checking the anti-diabetic nature. The molecular dynamics simulations were carried out for the most favorable compounds and stability was checked during the simulations. The ethanol extract exhibits significant α-amylase and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities with an IC50 value of 38μg and 88μg dry extract, respectively, and well compared with standard acarbose drug. The antimicrobial activity was also carried out for various extracts (Chloroform, Ethyl acetate, and Ethanol) of the same (C. intybus) screened against four selected human pathogens. Compared to other solvent extracts, ethanol and chloroform extracts show better inhibition and their minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) value has been calculated. Conclusion: In-silico studies and in-vitro studies reveals that C.intybus plant compounds have more potent for treating diabetes

This paper reports on the development of an N-doped zinc oxide nanoparticle (N–ZnO) based optical biosensor for selective urea detection. The N–ZnO nanoparticle has a particle size of 10 nm with a bandgap of 2.6 eV, and it exhibits fluorescence emission at 385 nm under an excitation of 340 nm. The optical sensing of N–ZnO was examined in the presence of various biomolecules such as urea, glucose, thiourea, sucrose and BSA. The fluorescence response through the electron–hole recombination energy transfer process was observed in all the N–ZnO and biomolecule combinations. The optical sensing response was selectively high for urea compared to the other aforementioned compounds. The results confirm higher sensitivity for urea detection in the presence of N–ZnO with a linear range of 2.6–26 μM at a detection limit of 4.93 ± 0.02 μM. Furthermore, the higher sensitivity and recovery of urea in the blood serum validates the efficacy of N–ZnO. The outcome of the reported work suggests that N–ZnO can be used as a promising nanomaterial for a quick-time optical biosensing system for urea detection and also as a pH sensing probe in clinical applications.

Breast cancer has been and continues to be a cause of major health concern for women. It is more prevalent in old age, but its incidence has increased in recent years in groups below 50 years old, as in India. According to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) 2020, 50% of all the cases are in the age group of 25-50 where the numbers are staggering and constantly rising. The increase in incidence over the years indicates an urging need for innovative approaches to enhance breast cancer detection early. Thermography is non-contact imaging modalities and has potential to detect breast cancer at an early stage. Though thermography has capable of detecting breast cancer early, the challenge lies in the interpretation of the breast thermograms with respect to features and subsequent analysis. The present work discusses image acquisition, image processing related pre-processing, segmentation, and feature extraction. The extracted features were analyzed using ANOVA (Analysis of variance) statistical analysis. Statistical analyses were done in order to find the appropriate feature on the whole and quadrant breast. Statistical analysis results clearly reveal existence of thermal symmetry for the healthy subjects (p value .05) in both whole and quadrant breast regions. In the case of abnormal subjects, whole breast analyses revealed the significance (p value .05) for features like mean, variance, standard deviation, kurtosis, skewness, entropy, energy, homogeneity and contrast whereas upper outer quadrant analyses showed significance for all above features except contrast. The well correlated features of upper outer quadrant and whole breast were given as input for the Support Vector Machine - Radial Basis Function (SVM - RBF) classifier with grid search method. The results revealed that whole breast analysis has achieved 92.86% accuracy and upper outer quadrant breast analysis has achieved 85.71% accuracy. The results clearly indicate the involvement of upper outer quadrant and whole breast in early detection of breast cancer using thermal imaging.

In a high-energy medical linear accelerator (linac), if the interaction of photon energy is higher than the neutron binding energy of high atomic material, it emits a neutron field through a photonuclear reaction. The objective of this current study is to measure the photoneutron dose equivalent produces in a motorized wedge field and open field of 10 MV and 15 MV photon beams in Elekta Versa HD™ linac. The PNDE values were recorded at various positions along the patient plane using the Bubble Detector-Personal Neutron Dosimeter (BD-PND). The results revealed that the PNDE values are higher in 20 × 20 cm

Oral cancer has a poor five-year survival rate and has not improved much in the past two decades which is due to late diagnosis. In current clinical practice analysis of Haematoxylin Eosin stained tissue biopsy is considered as a golden standard which is rather painful and routine check is not possible. In this regard, native fluorescence spectroscopy has been considered to discriminate cancer tissue based on relative alterations in the level of tryptophan. To estimate relative variations of tryptophan at different layers of tissue fluorescence polarization gating technique has been adopted which is based on the principle that the light from the superficial layer of tissue partially retain the polarization plane of incident light as they are less scattered while light from the deeper layer is completely depolarized due to multiple scattering. Integrated intensity of tryptophan was quantified, and subsequent statistical analysis has been carried out to evaluate the diagnostic potentiality of the proposed technique. It was found that the fractional variation of tryptophan in the superficial layer to the deeper layer was found to be statistically more significant in discriminating oral cancer than cumulative tryptophan in both layers.

High incidence of oral cancer is primarily due to ongoing tobacco epidemic. In this work, synchronous luminescence spectroscopy (SLS) has been used to characterize and discriminate oral cancer tissue. Spectral deconvolution method is employed to compute the fluorescence intensity, peak wavelength, and full width half maxima for different endogenous fluorophores. The fluorescence measurements were made on 21 normal and 88 oral squamous cell carcinoma biopsy tissues. Besides, variations in relative concentration of collagen, NADH, and FAD, peak shifts and broadening of peaks are observed for tryptophan, NADH, and FAD, in oral cancer tissues indicating both biochemical and micro environmental changes at cellular level. Linear discriminant analysis showed that oral cancer tissue is discriminated with a sensitivity and specificity of 100% and 95.2% respectively.

Herein, we have reported a cost-effective method of synthesizing highly efficient silica nanomaterial from rice husks for its application as a chemotherapeutic agent. Silica particle with two different sizes ~20 nm and ~40 nm were achieved from silica precursor obtained from rice husk. 5-Fluorouracil was functionalized onto the surface of silica nanoparticles by direct conjugation and chitosan mediated conjugation. Particle size analysis, zeta potential and functional analyzes were performed in systematic methodology to confirm chitosan coating and 5-Fluorouracil conjugation on silica nanoparticles. The drug loading percentage with respect to the particle size shows that ~20 nm particles have higher loading capacity. The chitosan mediated conjugation of drug shows sustained release in acidic pH and hence suitable for cancer cell-targeted delivery. The in vitro cell culture studies performed on MC3T3 fibroblast cell lines, MCF-7 and A549 cancer cell lines depicts that, compared to direct conjugation of 5-Fluorouracil, chitosan mediated drug conjugation on the surface of silica nanoparticles shows lesser toxic to fibroblast cell lines and higher toxicity towards cancer cell lines. The results of this toxicity were also confirmed from the nucleic acid spectral signature of Raman spectra treated with drug conjugated silica nanoparticles.

Bioactive coatings on metallic implants promote osseointegration between bone and implant interfaces. A suitable coating enhances the life span of the implant and reduces the requirement of revision surgery. The coating process needs to be optimized such that it does not alter the bioactivity of the material. To understand this, the biocompatibility of nanostructured bioactive glass and hydroxyapatite-coated Titanium substrate by pulsed laser deposition method is evaluated. Raman and IR spectroscopic techniques based on silica and phosphate functional groups mapping have confirmed homogeneity in coatings by pulse laser deposition method. Comparative studies on nanostructured bioactive glass and hydroxyapatite on titanium surface elaborated the significance of bioactivity, hemocompatibility, and cytocompatibility of the coated surface. Notably, both hydroxyapatite and bioactive glass show good hemocompatibility in powder form. Hemocompatibility and cytocompatibility results validate the enhanced sustenance for hydroxyapatite coating. These results signify the importance of the choice of coating methodology of bioceramics towards implant applications.

Mortality of oral cancer is often due to late diagnosis. Effective non-invasive diagnostic techniques may increase the survival rate based on an earlier diagnosis.. We report on the application of the polarization gating technique for isolating weakly scattered and highly scattered components of fluorescence emission from the superficial and deeper layers of tissue due to intrinsic fluorophores NADH and FAD. The fluorescence polarization spectra were collected from 21 normal and 67 oral squamous cell carcinoma biopsy tissues. The tissues were excited at 350 nm and the fluorescence emission had two peaks corresponding to NADH, and FAD respectively. The spectra were analyzed using the polarization gating technique along with the spectral deconvolution method to derive the optical redox ratio from different layers of tissue. The fractional change in redox ratio between superficial and deeper layers of tissue exhibits excellent statistical significance (p

In this work, we have reported on the facile synthesis of white light-emitting carbon quantum dots (CQD) from corncob by hydrothermal method. This CQD has a broad emission from 380 nm to 650 nm with high photoluminescence intensity even after three months of shelf-life and stable at variable pH conditions. The presence of Si and N impurities in the biomass gives a greater advantage in producing white light emission with high quantum yield (54%) and enhanced lifetime at ambient conditions. The CQD is highly sensitive towards DNA, paracetamol, Pb2+, Cu2+, Fe3+, and Cr3+ fluorescence sensing and signifies its application as a multi-modal fluorescence sensor. The results of optical sensitivity calculated from the linear range of 1‐10 ng/mL, 0.10‐0.30 mg/mL, 2.5446 ng/mL, 0.0694 mg/mL, 0.3103–1.5515 μM/mL, 0.4299–4.7293 μM/mL, 1.3010 μM/mL and 0.05–2.5 μM/mL. The limit of detection is 2.5446 ng/mL, 0.0694 mg/mL, 0.8641 μM/mL, 1.2454 μM/mL, 1.3010 μM/m, 0.8550 μM/mL and 2.8562 μM/mL, respectively. And also, the relative standard deviation values of 2.30%, 4.46%, 1.79%, 1.84%, 0.26%, 1.23% and 0.35% are evidences its possibility of development towards potential optical sensor applications. Flexible white light-emitting sheets were fabricated from the CQD, illuminates uniform brightness, and has good color reproducibility and higher stability under various UV light excitation.

In spite of rapid advancement in cancer treatment, early diagnosis of cancer and medicable precursors are still the finest approach towards the assurance of patient lives and enhancement in the quality of their life. In this regard, the present study deals with the time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy of normal and premalignant oral tissues under UV excitations (280nm and 310nm). The decay kinetics at 350nm emission of normal tissues exhibit higher fluorescence lifetime than that of premalignant tissues and subsequent statistical analysis shows that the data were statistically significant. Further, the decay kinetics at 450nm emission for normal and premalignant oral tissues was obtained. Subsequently, statistical analysis revealed that except fast component, rest of the component lifetimes and fractional amplitudes were not statistically significant. An attempt has also been made to explore the better statistical tool to discriminate premalignant tissues from normal ones at 350nm emission. Among stepwise linear discriminant analysis (SLDA) and receiver operator characteristics (ROC), the former discriminates premalignant from normal tissues with 86.7% specificity and 93.3% sensitivity. Hence, fluorescence lifetime spectroscopy at 350nm emission opens a new avenue for early detection of oral cancer.

Polarized Raman spectroscopy has emerged as a promising technique giving a wealth of information about the orientation and symmetry of bond vibrations in addition to the general chemical information from the conventional Raman spectroscopy. In this regard, polarized Raman Spectroscopic technique was employed to study the changes in the orientation of biomolecules in normal and cancerous conditions. This technique was compared to the conventional Raman spectroscopic technique and was found to yield additional information about the orientation of tyrosine, collagen and DNA. The statistically analyzed depolarization ratios by Linear Discriminant Analysis yielded better accuracy than the statistical results of conventional Raman spectroscopy. Thus, this study reveals that polarized Raman spectroscopy has better diagnostic potential than the conventional Raman spectroscopic technique.

The molecular level changes associated with oncogenesis precede the morphological changes in cells and tissues. Hence molecular level diagnosis would promote early diagnosis of the disease. Raman spectroscopy is capable of providing specific spectral signature of various biomolecules present in the cells and tissues under various pathological conditions. The aim of this work is to develop a non-linear multi-class statistical methodology for discrimination of normal, neoplastic and malignant cells/tissues. The tissues were classified as normal, pre-malignant and malignant by employing Principal Component Analysis followed by Artificial Neural Network (PC-ANN). The overall accuracy achieved was 99%. Further, to get an insight into the quantitative biochemical composition of the normal, neoplastic and malignant tissues, a linear combination of the major biochemicals by non-negative least squares technique was fit to the measured Raman spectra of the tissues. This technique confirms the changes in the major biomolecules such as lipids, nucleic acids, actin, glycogen and collagen associated with the different pathological conditions. To study the efficacy of this technique in comparison with histopathology, we have utilized Principal Component followed by Linear Discriminant Analysis (PC-LDA) to discriminate the well differentiated, moderately differentiated and poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma with an accuracy of 94.0%. And the results demonstrated that Raman spectroscopy has the potential to complement the good old technique of histopathology.

In India oral cancer ranks the top due to the habitual usage of tobacco in its various forms and remains the major burden. Hence priority is given for early diagnosis as it is the better solution for cure or to improve the survival rate. For the past three decades, optical spectroscopic techniques have shown its capacity in the discrimination of normal and malignant samples. Many research works have conventional Raman in the effective detection of cancer using the variations in bond vibrations of the molecules. However in addition polarized Raman provides the orientation and symmetry of biomolecules. If so can polarized Raman be the better choice than the conventional Raman in the detection of cancer? The present study aimed to found the answer for the above query. The conventional and polarized Raman spectra were acquired for the same set of blood plasma samples of normal subjects and oral malignant (OSCC) patients. Thus, obtained Raman spectral data were compared using linear discriminant analysis coupled with artificial neural network (LDA-ANN). The depolarization ratio of biomolecules such as antioxidant, amino acid, protein and nucleic acid bases present in blood plasma was proven to be the best attributes in the categorization of the groups. The polarized Raman results were promising in discriminating oral cancer blood plasma from that of normal blood plasma with improved efficiency. The results will be discussed in detail.

Urine is considered as one of the diagnostically important bio fluids, as it has many metabolites. The distribution and the physiochemical properties of the metabolites may vary during any altered metabolic and pathological conditions. Raman spectroscopy was employed in the characterization of the metabolites of human urine of normal subjects and oral cancer patients in the finger print region (500–1800 cm−1). Principal component analysis-based linear discriminant analysis was performed to discriminate cancer patients from normal subjects. The discriminant analysis classifies the cancer patients from normal subjects with a sensitivity and specificity of 98.6% and 87.1%, respectively, with an overall accuracy of 93.7%. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Oral cancer having a high incidence and recurrence rate causes a potential threat and huge economic burden in Southeast Asia. In light of the aforementioned text, early and accurate diagnosis of this disease addressing molecular level changes would play a vital role in reducing the recurrence and increasing the survival rate. Raman spectroscopy has significant potential in the characterization and clinical diagnosis of normal and cancerous tissues at molecular level. To the best of our knowledge, to date, no study has been reported for Raman mapping of oral tissues. This study consistently showed the increased presence of glycogen, lipids, and proteins in all the normal oral tissues, whereas the nucleic acid content was found to be more in cancerous samples. The spectral data were exploited to construct pseudocolor images using principal component analysis and K-means clustering. Thus, obtained Raman maps clearly delineated the tumor margins and was confirmed by the subsequent histopathological report of the hematoxylin–eosin stained samples. A blinded sample was mapped as well, and it showed a few pixels characteristic of malignancy. Upon histological evaluation, the blinded sample was reported as dysplastic, which was in agreement with the obtained Raman image. Hence, this study provides a firm basis to Raman spectral mapping for oral cancer diagnosis and for delineating the tumor margin. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study is aimed to monitor the therapeutic response in breast cancer patients, by using the Raman spectra of liquid blood plasma of biopsy proved 19 breast cancer patients under pre and post treatment conditions and also by comparing them with the spectra of control group, consisting of 26 normal subjects (with no significant history of illness) in the same age group. The results indicate that there exists a statistical significance in the spectral signatures between the normal and breast cancer patient’s blood plasma as well as between pre treated and post treated plasma, which may be attributed to the changes in the vibrational characteristics of some of the key biomolecules viz tyrosine, phenylalanine, methionine, tryptophan, lipids/phospholipids, amides, DNA base pairs(adenine and guanine) etc. Further, it is found that the spectral signatures of post treated plasma (after completion of the entire course of treatment) are almost matching with that of normal subjects. The results of the study indicates the possibility of using Raman Spectroscopy for diagnosis as well as for monitoring of treatment response in breast cancer patients.