Over 570,000 new cases of bladder cancer are diagnosed worldwide every year. It is essential to detect new tumors as early as possible to reduce the mortality rate. In addition, the muscle invasiveness of lesions should be quantified to determine the optimal treatment plan.

Within the "Next-gen in-vivo cancer diagnostics" research project we propose a new cystoscopy instrument consisting of an optical coherence tomography (OCT) sensor, a camera and a light source, mounted on the tip of a concentric tube robot (CTR). The camera images could then be used to create 3-D reconstructions of the bladder wall and to quantifiy changes in its texture between successive cystoscopy sessions. In addition, the camera could guide the OCT sensor to investigate the bladder wall structure at the locations of possible tumors in order to investigate the malignancy and muscle invasiveness.

This research specifically reports on creating 3-D reconstructions of bladder phantoms and co-registration of successive sessions, in order to automatically detect and indicate changes in texture which might be related to the onset and growth of tumors.

The results show that cystoscopy images of the bladder could be reconstructed in 3-D and subsequently projected to a 2-D atlas. Registrations of successive sessions were effectively co-registered with help of the TPS algorithm and the system was able to automatically detect all six images of tumors which were added between the two sessions.