An evaluation of the clinical potential of tissue diffraction studies

Abstract

Medical imaging is a long established part of patient management in the treatment of disease. However, in most cases it only provides anatomical detail and does not provide any form of tissue characterisation. This is particularly true for X-ray imaging. Recent studies on tissue diffraction have shown that true molecular signatures can be derived for different tissue types. Breast cancer samples and liver tissue have been studied. It has been shown that diffraction profiles can be traced away from the primary tumour in excised breast tissue samples and that potentially 3mm fat nodules in liver tissue can be identified in patients at acceptable doses.