Large Field, High Resolution Full-Field Optical Coherence Tomography: A Pre-clinical Study of Human Breast Tissue and Cancer Assessment

Abstract

We present a benchmark pilot study in which high-resolution Full-Field Optical Coherence Tomography (FF-OCT) was used to image human breast tissue and is evaluated to assess its ability to aid the pathologist’s management of intra-operative diagnoses. FF-OCT imaging safety was investigated and agreement between FF-OCT and routinely prepared histopathological images was evaluated. The compact setup used for this study provides 1 µm3 resolution and 200 µm imaging depth, and a 2.25 cm2 specimen is scanned in about 7 minutes. 75 breast specimens were imaged from 22 patients (21 women, 1 man) with a mean age of 58 (range: 25-83). Pathologists blind diagnosed normal/benign or malignant tissue based on FF-OCT images alone, diagnosis from histopathology followed for comparison. The contrast in the FF-OCT images is generated by intrinsic tissue scattering properties, meaning that no tissue staining or preparation is required. Major architectural features and tissue structures of benign breast tissue, including adipocytes, fibrous stroma, lobules and ducts were characterized. Subsequently, features resulting from pathological modification were characterized and a diagnosis decision tree was developed. Using FF-OCT images, two breast pathologists were able to distinguish normal/benign tissue from lesional with a sensitivity of 94% and 90%, and specificity of 75% and 79% respectively.

3D static elastography at the micrometer scale using Full Field OCT

“…Recent studies on fresh breast tissue have demonstrated good correspondence between histology slides and FF-OCT images [17]. These studies show very good agreement between histopathological and FF-OCT based diagnoses by exploiting only the morphology of the tissue (sensitivity 93%, specificity 75%).…”

Assessment of Sentinel Node Biopsies With Full-Field Optical Coherence Tomography

“…In all cases, FFOCT imaging was performed minutes after excision by a technician from the pathology laboratory, who followed a training of 1 hour before the start of the study. A previous study 32 verified that the FFOCT imaging procedure does not alter the tissue in any way that affects the histological diagnosis and that it is perfectly safe to perform an FFOCT imaging step prior to histology.…”

“…She had been involved, however, in a previous study on breast tissue 32 and was therefore familiar with FFOCT images. Lymph node images were collected into randomized and anonymized batches of 15 to 20 samples.…”

“…It has been described previously. 32 Illumination is provided by a halogen source, whose short coherence length leads to an axial resolution of 1 mm. The full field is illuminated and images are captured on a CMOS camera.…”

“…The FFOCT has already been evaluated in the pathology laboratory in various preclinical studies on human skin, 24,25 pulmonary, 26 urologic, 27 and gastrointestinal tissue, 28 retina and cornea, 29,30 and brain. 31 Recently, a preclinical study was performed on breast tissue samples 32 and achieved sensitivity of 92% and specificity of 77%. Scanning time (less than 10 minutes for 1 cm 2 ) was comparable to figures published for ex vivo reflectance confocal microscopy as mentioned earlier.…”