Monitoring Efficiency of Ovarian Cancer Treatment using Overtone Absorption Spectroscopy on Microfibers

Cancer is the leading factor of death in the western world. Ovarian cancer, which also terms the "silent killer", is the fifth common malignancy cancer and the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths among North American women. However, the quantification and monitoring the response to therapy requires bulky and costly imaging equipment such as computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET) scanners. Therefore, cancer patients are monitored once every several cycles of treatments to quantify their clinical response to therapy which harms inspection of the treatment efficiency.

We show a rapid fine needle aspiration test to measure the response to therapy of ovarian cancer using a microfiber in the near-IR. We studied the optical mode evolution in microfibers while varying the diameter of the core in aqua medium and found the optimal core diameter for efficient excitation of molecular overtone vibrations in an aquatic medium. We fabricated the microfibers using a conventional tapering technique and observed a treatment influence on the cancer cells.

Using the proposed here technique, relatively fast detection of tumors response to treatment in an accurate manner, 24 hours after treatment, would be possible.