Diagnosis of inflammatory diseases of the paranasal sinuses using diaphanoscopy

Diagnosis of inflammatory diseases of the paranasal sinuses is one of the urgent problems of modern otolaryngology. Presently, radiography, computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, rhinoscopy and ultrasound are used to identify these pathologies. However, due to use of carcinogenic roentgen radiation during the study, a high level of false-negative results and painfulness of the diagnostic procedures, application of these methods is limited.To overcome these shortcomings, the application of the digital diaphanoscopy method seems to be promising. For realization of this approach the experimental setup was designed and assembled. Low-intensity radiation of the visible and near IR ranges and CMOS-camera were used for translucence of the paranasal sinuses and visualizing the pattern of scattering light.To identify the range of exposure values of the CMOS-camera to obtain maximum sensitivity to identify of pathological changes, experimental studies were conducted on healthy volunteers and patients with inflammatory diseases of paranasal sinuses. During the studies the exposure time of CMOS-camera changed in the range from 0 to 39.7 ms with a step of 1 ms, followed by comparison of the results of digital diaphanoscopy with results of MRI. The results of study 20 volunteers and 15 patients of different genders and ages showed variations in the scattering patterns with the same exposure time. This was explained by such anatomic features as the structure of the skin, the thickness of the skull bone tissue, the size of the sinuses and their asymmetry.