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The failure to accurately define tumor margins during breast conserving surgery (BCS) results in a 20% re-excision rate. The present paper reports the investigation to evaluate the potential of terahertz imaging for breast tissue recognition within the under-explored 300 - 600 GHz range. Such a frequency window matches new BiCMOS technology capabilities and thus opens up the opportunity for near-field terahertz imaging using these devices. To assess the efficacy of this frequency band, data from 16 freshly excised breast tissue samples were collected and analyzed directly after excision. Complex refractive indices have been extracted over the as-mentioned frequency band, and amplitude frequency images show some contrast between tissue types. Principal component analysis (PCA) has also been applied to the data in an attempt to automate tissue classification. Our observations suggest that the dielectric response could potentially provide contrast for breast tissue recognition within the 300 - 600 GHz range. These results open the way for silicon-based terahertz subwavelength near field imager design, efficient up to 600 GHz to address ex vivo life-science applications.

Imaging with terahertz (THz) waves has been expected as a non-invasive/non-staining visualization tool for breast cancer margins during surgeries. Breast cancer is a generic name for a heterogeneous lesion comprising invasive adenocarcinoma, in situ adenocarcinoma, most frequently in the form of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and benign tissues. Until now, THz imaging has focused on invasive adenocarcinoma; however, THz analysis of DCIS has hardly been performed. One of the reasons is that the size of an individual DCIS lesion, ranging from 50 to 500 µm, is typically much smaller than that of an invasive carcinoma. This makes it difficult to identify these lesions by THz imaging, which has only a diffraction-limited spatial resolution of several millimeters. To overcome this drawback, we have developed a scanning point terahertz source (SPoTS) microscope with a resolution of 20 µm, in which a near-infrared-pump-laser-induced two-dimensionally-scannable point THz source (φ THz ≈ φ Pump) generated in a GaAs crystal contacts a sample. In this study, utilizing this state-of-the-art microscope, we mainly performed THz near-field transmission imaging of a paraffin-embedded human breast cancer sample containing invasive carcinoma and DCIS, as a preliminary study. Consequently, for the first time, we succeeded in clearly visualizing a DCIS lesion of ∼φ500 µm in the THz images. It was also found that the THz attenuation by DCIS was higher than that by invasive ductal carcinoma. Furthermore, also in a reflection-mode measurement, we successfully obtained a similar outcome to the above transmission-mode one. These results can be caused by the interaction between the THz waves and the cellular density, indicating that SPoTS microscopy may be suitable for DCIS diagnosis.

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This paper reports investigations led on the combination of the refractive index and morphological dilation to enhance performances towards breast tumour margin delineation during conserving surgeries. The refractive index map of invasive ductal and lobular carcinomas were constructed from an inverse electromagnetic problem. Morphological dilation combined with refractive index thresholding was conducted to classify the tissue regions as malignant or benign. A histology routine was conducted to evaluate the performances of various dilation geometries associated with different thresholds. It was found that the combination of a wide structuring element and high refractive index was improving the correctness of tissue classification in comparison to other configurations or without dilation. The method reports a sensitivity of around 80% and a specificity of 82% for the best case. These results indicate that combining the fundamental optical properties of tissues denoted by their refractive index with morphological dilation may open routes to define supporting procedures during breast-conserving surgeries.

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