Abstract
Based on a terahertz (THz) pipe-based near-field imaging system, we demonstrate the capability of THz imaging to diagnose freshly surgically excised human colonic tissues. Through THz near-field scanning the absorbance of the colonic tissues, the acquired images can clearly distinguish cancerous tissues from healthy tissues fast and automatically without pathological hematoxylin and eosin stain diagnosis. A statistical study on 58 specimens (20 healthy tissues and 38 tissues with tumor) from 31 patients (mean age: 59 years; range: 46 to 79 years) shows that the corresponding diagnostic sensitivity and specificity on colonic tissues are both 100%. Due to its capability to perform quantitative analysis, our study indicates the potential of the THz pipe-based near-field imaging for future automation on human tumor pathological examinations.
Highlights
Terahertz (THz) radiation has a number of properties that make it an attractive biomedical imaging technique.[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] For example, compared to infrared and optical radiation, THz radiations longer wavelengths reduce the chances of scattering in biologic tissue.[1]
In our previous works,[4,5,7] we demonstrated the capability of THz near-field imaging to differentiate human breast and liver tumors from healthy tissues
The absorbance spectra we used for analyzing images are shown in Fig. 4, which was measured in far-field and calculated according to the mean absorbance based on 30 different human colonic tissue specimens (14 healthy and 16 with tumor)
Summary
Terahertz (THz) radiation has a number of properties that make it an attractive biomedical imaging technique.[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8] For example, compared to infrared and optical radiation, THz radiations longer wavelengths reduce the chances of scattering in biologic tissue.[1]. In our previous works,[4,5,7] we demonstrated the capability of THz near-field imaging to differentiate human breast and liver tumors from healthy tissues. We improved on our original THz fiber-based near-field imaging system[4,5,7] by increasing the THz power at the sample by use of a pipe waveguide. We used this pipe-based near-field imaging system to diagnose freshly surgically excised human colonic tissues. The capability to distinguish tumors from healthy tissues is demonstrated by quantitative analysis, and the corresponding sensitivity and specificity are both as high as 100%
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