In this work, we evaluate the potential for Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIm) to complement a surgeon's visual, endoscopic, and pathologic assessment of the adequacy of intraoperative tumor resection in clinical cancer applications of the oral cavity and oropharynx. Using a custom-built FLIm instrument during both non-robotic and robotic assisted surgical procedures, we show that intrapatient contrast between healthy and tumor tissue can be achieved intraoperatively in vivo prior to cancer resection with statistical significance (p<0.001) in 9/9 patients using at least 1/6 FLIm parameters, and ex vivo for surgically excised specimens (p<0.001) for 8/9 patients. We employ a multi-parameter linear discriminant analysis approach to demonstrate superior pathology discrimination ability through leveraging a weighted combination of all FLIm metrics. We also highlight interpatient comparisons to evaluate how FLIm signatures vary across different patients and disparate tissue anatomies.
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