# Validation of Light Scattering Spectroscopy for Intra-operative Margin Guidance during Oral Cancer Resection

> **NIH NIH R01** · BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER · 2024 · $703,116

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Nearly 37,000 new cases of oral cancer will be diagnosed in the United States in 2019, and nearly half will
die in 5 years. The lethality of this disease is partially attributed to the fact that most cases are in advanced
stages when diagnosed. Surgical resection remains a primary modality for treatment but local and regional
recurrence remains the most common problem after surgical resection; patients with advanced stage oral
cancer experience recurrence rates as high as 60-80% in the first 3 years. Inadequate tumor excision is a
common cause for such local recurrence. This could be explained by the imprecise methods currently used
for assessing surgical margins and by the presence of “satellite” malignant cells (“skip lesions”) in sites away
from the primary cancerous lesion which occur as a result of the “field cancerization” phenomenon. Currently,
surgeons often depend on their own judgment or visualization under white light to determine surgical
margins. Confirmation of negative margins is based on randomly selected samples for intraoperative frozen
section analysis, leaving much of the surgical margin unexamined. Moreover, frozen section analysis can be
time consuming, expensive, and have a high false negative rate. A more efficient and precise approach is
needed.
Optical technologies can be used to distinguish in situ benign from malignant tissue lesions. Elastic
Scattering Spectroscopy (ESS) is a point spectroscopic measuring technique that can detect with great
sensitivity sub-cellular morphologic differences between benign and malignant tissue. These differences
include nuclear size, chromatin granularity or density, organelle sizes and densities, and other sub-cellular
features. ESS provides the advantage of real-time, objective and quick assessment of tissue morphology; the
optical-spectroscopy equivalent of histopathological readings. Past research demonstrated the ability of ESS
to differentiate with good precision normal versus abnormal oral mucosa, in-vivo, during oral cancer surgical
resection. The first aim of this current study is to expand on that work by further training the ESS algorithms
on a much larger prospective dataset so that the technology can demonstrate clinically acceptable accuracy
standards. The second aim of this study is to design and test novel instrumentation capable of differentiating
between normal and abnormal tissue on both aspects of the deep margin (tumor and tumor bed). One
hundred and twenty patients will be enrolled from Boston Medical Center and from the Boston VA hospitals.
ESS measures will be co-registered with histopathological assessments of dysplasia grade and inflammation
type.
Further refinement of this technology will result in the validation of ESS instrumentation capable of facilitating
intraoperative margin guidance. Our hypothesis is that further refinement of our ESS algorithms will greatly
improve surgeons' accuracy in determining which tissue should go to frozen sect...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10854947
- **Project number:** 5R01DE029862-05
- **Recipient organization:** BOSTON MEDICAL CENTER
- **Principal Investigator:** GREGORY A GRILLONE
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $703,116
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-07-07 → 2026-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10854947

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10854947, Validation of Light Scattering Spectroscopy for Intra-operative Margin Guidance during Oral Cancer Resection (5R01DE029862-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10854947. Licensed CC0.

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