Novel Approach Exploiting the Hyperspectral Imaging System for Breast Cancer Therapy and Diagnosis

Breast malignant growth is the most widely recognized disease in women in both highly and less developed nations where early detection is vital for life-saving and fast recovery. Recently, Photonic technologies has played a vital role in medical applications. Their satisfactory and viable implementation in therapy and diagnosis requires reliable information on the optical properties of human tissues. This study presents an outline of recent outcomes on the magnitude of breast tissue optical properties.

We established two different system setups utilizing hyperspectral (HS) camera and multiple excitation source lights with wavelength (380~1050 nm) for this investigation. The first setup (Transmission Mode) was applied for light transmission measurement of ex-vivo breast sample. Thereby, we made calculations of sample absorption. The second setup (Reflection Mode) was used for the measurement of breast sample light diffuse reflectance. The outcomes of both setups were used to select the optimum spectral image to differentiate between the normal and tumoral regions in the ex-vivo breast sample by exploring the optical properties spectroscopy in the Near and visible (NIR-VIS) spectrum. Finally, we applied the custom system on the case study technique for breast tumor detection.

Experimental investigations results showed that due to the various excitation wavelength light source (380~1050 nm) generates variable depths of penetration depth in the ex-vivo breast sample. Consequently, experimental results of the diffuse reflectance (Ŗd) provide the optimum spectral image at 600 nm for the diagnostic applications. However, the statistical calculation of the normalized signal validated the outcome at wavelength 680 nm. Additionally, we noticed the optimum spectral image for therapy applications at 700 nm by measurement of breast tissue transmission (Ţ) and attenuation absorption (Ą) calculation. Moreover, the statistical calculation of the normalized signal validated the outcome at wavelength 760 nm.

The proposed novel approach successfully provided promising results of the investigated breast sample optical properties in both diagnostic and therapy applications to assist the pathologist and the surgeon. The trail outcomes of the investigated case study were impressive for selecting optimum wavelength for diagnostic and treatment (680, 760 nm), respectively.