Frozen Terahertz Imaging of Oral Cancer

Terahertz (THz) imaging has been evaluated for the application of cancer diagnosis, especially skin and breast cancers (Fitzgerald et al. 2006; Wallace et al. 2006), as thoroughly reviewed in Chapters 15 and 16. e reason to focus on such cancers using THz technology is that THz radiation cannot penetrate deeply into biological tissues, most of which have abundant water. e oral area is also easily accessible with a THz endoscope, as described in detail in Chapter 6, although internal organs such as the stomach and colon can now be reached following the development of more compact THz endoscopes (Ji et al. 2009). Most oral cancers are in the epidermis of the oral cavity and are produced from melanocytes or carcinoma cells; in their early stages, they seem to be potentially less dangerous to life. However, some papers on oral cancer metastasis have reported a higher death rate than that of skin cancer, so the early diagnosis of oral cancer is important to prevent the proliferation of cancer cells (Lozano et al. 2013). erefore, the detection of oral tumors using THz radiation is an interesting subject and could have wide-ranging clinical applications.