Visible and near-infrared spectroscopy for distinguishing malignant tumor tissue from benign tumor and normal breast tissuesin vitro

Yang Zhang,Xingbo Xue,Dan Zhu,Yongjun Chen,Yuan Yu,Valery V Tuchin

doi:10.1117/1.jbo.18.7.077003

Abstract

The high incidence and mortality of breast cancer requires an effective, rapid, and cost-effective method for its diagnosis. Here, visible and near-infrared spectroscopy in the wavelength range of 400 to 2200 nm is utilized for distinguishing the malignant tumor tissue from benign tumor and normal breast tissues. Based on the absorption and scattering spectra of fixed samples, three spectral analysis methods are proposed which include an absorption spectral analysis, a scattering spectral analysis, and a combined spectral analysis of the two. By comparison with the histopathological examination, the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of the three analysis methods are calculated. The results showed that the combined spectral analysis method can significantly enhance the effectiveness when compared with the sole absorption or scattering spectral analysis method. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of the combined spectral analysis method are 100%, 87.82%, and 87.50% for the benign tumor tissue and 81.82%, 100%, and 87.5% for malignant tumor tissue, respectively. All of the three values are 100% for normal breast tissue. This study demonstrates that the combined spectral analysis method has better potential for in vitro optical diagnosis for breast lesions.

Highlights

Breast cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors for women
Normal breast tissue samples were obtained from safe margins of tumors without obvious tumor characteristics, which were confirmed by histopathology
The absorption spectrum variation factor A defined in this work indicates an extremely significant difference between normal and diseased breast tissues and a significant difference between benign and malignant breast tissues

Summary

Introduction

Breast cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors for women. The incidence rate of breast cancer has been growing rapidly during the past 10 years. There are almost 1.3 million women suffering from breast cancer each year, and the mortality of breast cancer is up to 40%.1,2. An accurate and efficiency method for early screening of breast cancer is required. Mammography, a common diagnostic technique, has been a common screening tool for breast cancer. It is not sensitive to cancerous lesions for radiological dense breasts, which may lead to a significant false-positive reports.[3] Diffuse optical technique based on frequency domain,[4,5,6,7,8] time resolved,[9,10] continuous wave,[11] or the combination[12,13] was used to measure the concentration of oxy-(HbO2) and deoxy(HbR)hemoglobin to assess the metabolism state of normal or lesion breast, which has shown some potential for noninvasive breast cancer screening

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Conclusion