Mapping structural changes in breast tissue disease using x‐ray scattering

Abstract

Spread of invasive carcinoma throughout breast tissue is believed to occur at supramolecular levels, beyond the range of standard histopathology identification. Small angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) is capable of characterizing the structural properties of collagen and tissue found in the breast at the scale of tens to hundreds of nanometers. Fifty-six patients who were treated with wide-local excision or mastectomy had tissue biopsy samples analyzed at 2 cm intervals along two perpendicular axes over their excised mass, up to 6 cm away from the primary site of the tumor. Two SAXS parameters, the integrated amorphous scatter and the third order collagen axial d spacing, showed significant differences between the center (0 cm) and distant tissues (2, 4, or 6 cm from the primary lesion). There was no evidence of directional trends (superior, inferior, or lateral sides of the nipple) of these two parameters over the breast. Mapping of these two variables over a two-dimensional grid showed good matching with independent histopathology diagnosis. These results suggest that SAXS may be capable of identifying areas of invasion or directional spread of disease as well as providing more information at the supramolecular level for aiding tissue diagnosis.

Aspects of Collagen Changes in Breast Cancer

“…Also, the quantitative evaluation of forward-to-backward second harmonic generation signals have proven useful to differentiate invasive breast cancer and to monitor the progress of collagen changes during breast carcinogenesis [41]. It is worth mentioning that also another technique suited for analysis of large-scale organization of macromolecules, such as small angle x-ray scattering, was successfully employed to the identification of the structural aspects of collagen in breast cancer tissues, allowing discriminating regions of cancer cell invasion and predicting the direction of cancer spreading [42].…”

Small-angle scatter tomography with a photon-counting detector array

“…The structural information in ECM can differentiate invasive carcinoma from benign lesions or healthy tissue. Notably, the scatter profiles can even differentiate between normal tissues with and without a cancer history, which are not detectable by conventional morphological markers (Sidhu et al 2009). …”

Characterization of breast tissue using energy-dispersive X-ray diffraction computed tomography

“…Several studies, based both on the SAXS (Lewis et al, 2000;Fernandez et al, 2002;Round et al, 2005;Suhonen et al, 2005;Sidhu et al, 2009) and on the XRD modality (Kidane et al, 1999;Poletti et al, 2002;LeClair et al, 2006;Ryan and Farquharson, 2007;Oliveira et al, 2008), have shown the feasibility of breast tissue characterization. Of particular interest is the possibility of discriminating healthy and neoplastic tissue.…”