TY - JOUR
T1 - In vivo detection of nanometer-scale structural changes of the human tympanic membrane in otitis media
AU - Dsouza, Roshan
AU - Won, Jungeun
AU - Monroy, Guillermo L.
AU - Hill, Malcolm C.
AU - Porter, Ryan G.
AU - Novak, Michael A.
AU - Boppart, Stephen A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Eric Chaney and Ronit Barkalifa for their assistance with managing IRB protocols and Darold Spillman for operations and information technology support. Research supported in this publication was supported in part by the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers R01EB013723 and R01CA213149, respectively. One-hundred percent of the total project costs were financed with federal money and zero percent of the total costs were financed by nongovernmental sources. The content is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Additional information can be found at http://biophotonics.illinois.edu.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Otitis media (OM) is a common ear infection and a leading cause of conductive hearing loss in the pediatric population. Current technologies such as otoscopy, pneumatic otoscopy, tympanometry, and acoustic reflectometry are used to diagnose OM, which can reasonably diagnose the infection with a sensitivity and specificity of 50-90% and 60-90%, respectively. However, these techniques provide limited information about the physical architecture of the tympanic membrane (TM), or what may lie behind it. Here, we report the detection of nanometer-scale structural changes of the TM using nano-sensitive optical coherence tomography (nsOCT). In total, an image dataset from 65 pediatric subjects from three different groups (normal, acute OM, and chronic OM) and with longitudinal image-based analysis of ear infections were included in this study. The nsOCT data were correlated with physician diagnosis and with OCT thickness measurements and were found to be in good agreement with these results. We report that nsOCT detects in vivo structural deformations of the TM earlier than OCT alone, and enhances the detection sensitivity of OCT measurements. This unique technique for early detection of nano-scale structural modifications in the TM has the potential to aid in our understanding of microbiological effects, and possibly for early diagnosis and more effective treatment of OM.
AB - Otitis media (OM) is a common ear infection and a leading cause of conductive hearing loss in the pediatric population. Current technologies such as otoscopy, pneumatic otoscopy, tympanometry, and acoustic reflectometry are used to diagnose OM, which can reasonably diagnose the infection with a sensitivity and specificity of 50-90% and 60-90%, respectively. However, these techniques provide limited information about the physical architecture of the tympanic membrane (TM), or what may lie behind it. Here, we report the detection of nanometer-scale structural changes of the TM using nano-sensitive optical coherence tomography (nsOCT). In total, an image dataset from 65 pediatric subjects from three different groups (normal, acute OM, and chronic OM) and with longitudinal image-based analysis of ear infections were included in this study. The nsOCT data were correlated with physician diagnosis and with OCT thickness measurements and were found to be in good agreement with these results. We report that nsOCT detects in vivo structural deformations of the TM earlier than OCT alone, and enhances the detection sensitivity of OCT measurements. This unique technique for early detection of nano-scale structural modifications in the TM has the potential to aid in our understanding of microbiological effects, and possibly for early diagnosis and more effective treatment of OM.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41598-018-26514-1
DO - 10.1038/s41598-018-26514-1
M3 - Article
C2 - 29884809
AN - SCOPUS:85048348911
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 8
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
IS - 1
M1 - 8777
ER -