Abstract

Development of noninvasive diagnostic techniques in clinical practice, especially sufficiently fast methods suitable for intraoperative use, remains a topical and challenging problem in modern medicine. Compressional Optical Coherence Elastography (OCE) that has a high potential to be intraoperatively applied. This study reports preliminary results on application of compressional OCE for identification of tumor margins and even differentiation of breast cancer types with low- and high- histological grades, i.e., a step towards creation of a kind of OCE-based optical biopsy. The reported variant of OCE utilized B-scans with scales ~2-4 mm comparable with typical scales of histological samples. The approach is based on the ability of OCE to quantitatively visualize distribution of the Young modulus (stiffness) in studied tissue samples, which then is used to perform "elasto-spectroscopy" generically resembling the mass-spectroscopy procedures. The procedures of the OCE examination do not require any special preparation of tissue samples and thus can be applied intraoperatively on time intervals ~ a few minutes with immediately available results. In the reported study, the samples after OCE examinations were subjected to histological studies and classification made by an experienced histopathologist. Comparison between the OCE results and histological data made it possible not only to distinguish between normal tissue and tumor (for determining resection boundary), but also to formulate OCE-based criteria allowing for differentiation between carcinomas of low grades and fairly good treatment prognosis and high-grade invasive tumors with poor prognosis. Similarly, identification of not only invasive breast tumors, but also benign breast lesions, intermediate between norm and malignant tumors can be made.

© 2019 SPIE/OSA