Method and apparatus for in vivo evaluation of tissue composition

Abstract

The specification discloses a method for determining the nature (e.g., physiological and compositional state) of internal tissue or other such biological material within a human organ or extremity, or other such individual examination subject, by use of selected light energy spectra. The selected light energy is applied to infuse the light throughout the interior of the area to be examined and the relative intensities of the infused light spectra are detected after having traversed the interior of the examination area. The detected intensities are computer-analyzed in a manner which conditions the raw magnitudes initially detected on the basis of the internal distance traversed by the infused light energy and also on the basis of broad averages of such conditioned wavelength-specific detection data representative of a number of comparable examination subjects. The resulting conditioned data is then plotted or otherwise comparatively analyzed, and the data profile so provided is shown to characterize the internal tissue structure and compositional state, showing relative amounts of particular different organic substance (e.g., fibro-glandular tissue, fat, hemoglobin, protein-bound water, etc.). Normative data profiles are prepared for specified age groupings, for comparison with corresponding data from individual subjects within such age groupings, whereby departures from the norm are graphically illustrated and revealed. The conditioned data also provides numeric quantification characterizing the relative different amounts of different tissue found to be present in a given test subject.