Cholesteatoma of the ear can lead to life-threatening complications and its only treatment is surgery. The smallest remnants of cholesteatoma can lead to recurrence of this disease. Therefore, the optical properties of this tissue are of high importance to identify and remove all cholesteatoma during therapy. In this paper, we determine the absorption coefficient µ a and scattering coefficient µ s ' of cholesteatoma and bone samples in the wavelength range of 250 nm to 800 nm obtained during five surgeries. These values are determined by high precision integrating sphere measurements in combination with an optimized inverse Monte Carlo simulation (iMCS). To conserve the optical behavior of living tissues, the optical spectroscopy measurements are performed immediately after tissue removal and preparation. It is shown that in the near-UV and visible spectrum clear differences exist between cholesteatoma and bone tissue. While µ a is decreasing homogeneously for cholesteatoma, it retains at the high level for bone in the region of 350 nm to 580 nm. Further, the results for the cholesteatoma measurements correspond to published healthy epidermis data. These differences in the optical parameters reveal the future possibility to detect and identify, automatically or semi-automatically, cholesteatoma tissue for active treatment decisions during image-guided surgery leading to a better surgical outcome.
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