Ex-vivo evaluation of miniaturized probes for endoscopic optical coherence tomography in urothelial cancer diagnostics

Background: The gold standard for detecting bladder cancer is white light cystoscopy (WLC) and resection of suspicious lesions. In this study, we evaluate two miniaturized Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) probes for endoscopic use, regarding their applicability in diagnosing urothelial cancer. Materials and methods: In total, 33 patients who underwent a radical cystectomy were included. Preoperative oncological staging and determining the indication for the surgical intervention were done following the latest European Association of Urology (EAU) guidelines. Samples were taken from bladder tissue after bladder removal and prepared for OCT measurement. Additionally, porcine bladder samples were used as reference tissue. We ...