Quantitative measurement of optical attenuation coefficients of cell lines CNE1, CNE2, and NP69 using optical coherence tomography

The radiotherapy-related types of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) have been established, which give the most effective treatment for NPC patients using the individual therapy. To diagnose the types of NPC, we assess the general NPC cell lines CNE1, CNE2 and normal nasopharyngeal cell line NP69 using optical coherence tomography (OCT) in two steps: firstly, the OCT images of the three different types of cell pellets are captured. Secondly, by fitting Beer’s law to the averaged A-scans in these OCT datasets, the attenuation coefficients (μ _t ) of the cells can be extracted. The median attenuation coefficients (interquartile range) of CNE1, CNE2, and NP69 are 5.58 mm⁻¹ (IQR 5.55 to 5.65 mm⁻¹), 5.91 mm⁻¹ (IQR 5.82 to 5.88 mm⁻¹), and 8.96 mm⁻¹ (IQR 8.80 to 9.47 mm⁻¹), respectively. The distinguishable quantitative OCT analysis (by μ _t ) shows that the types of NPC could potentially be differentiated in real time and noninvasive.