Spectroscopic Detection of Cervical Pre-Cancer through Radial Basis Function Networks

The mortality related to cervical cancer can be substantially reduced throughearly detection and treatment. However, current detection techniques, such as Pap smear and colposcopy, fail to achieve a concurrently high sensitivity and specificity. In vivo fluorescence spectroscopy is a technique which quickly, noninvasively andquantitatively probes the biochemical and morphological changes that occur in precancerous tissue. RBF ensemble algorithms based on such spectra provide automated, and near realtime implementationof pre-cancer detection in the hands of nonexperts. Theresults are more reliable, direct and accurate than those achieved by either human experts or multivariate statistical algorithms. 1 Introduction Cervical carcinoma is the second most common cancer in women worldwide, exceeded onlyby breast cancer (Ramanujam et al., 1996). The mortality related to cervical cancer can be reduced if this disease is detected at the precancerous state, known as squamous intraepitheliallesion (SIL).