Evaluation of histopathological response to neoadjuvant therapy in rectal cancer using slide‐free, stain‐free multimodal multiphoton microscopy

Abstract

Neoadjuvant therapy has become a standard treatment for patients with locally advanced rectal cancer to achieve better prognostic outcomes. The response to treatment has been shown to correlate closely with the prognosis. However, current evaluation systems only provide coarse assessment on limited information, due to the lack of accurate and reproducible approach for quantitation of different types of responses. In this study, a novel stain‐free, slide‐free multimodal multiphoton microscopy imaging technique was applied to image rectal cancer tissues after neoadjuvant therapies with high resolution and contrast. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation of tumor, stromal, and inflammatory responses were demonstrated which are consistent with current tumor regression grading system using American Joint Committee on Cancer criteria, showing the great potential of such approach to build a more informative grading system for accurate and standardizable assessment of neoadjuvant therapy in rectal cancer.

Prognostic significance of collagen signatures in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma obtained from second-harmonic generation imaging

“…Therefore, MPM can provide high-contrast images of cells as well as extracellular mesenchyme [ 18 , 19 ]. This capability helps basic and clinical researchers acquire detailed microstructural information of biological tissues [ 20 ], and previous studies demonstrated that MPM imaging could offer significant advantages in cancer detection, disease process research and the qualitative and quantitative analysis of collagen fibers within tumor microenvironment [ 21 – 23 ].…”