CCPM Symposium II ‐ 01: Imaging breast tumor tissue in vivo with diffuse light: Tumor tissue characterization and monitoring

Diffuse optical tomography with near‐infrared light has allowed characterization of breast tumor tissue with a number of different constituent parameters, which could have relevance for diagnosis and therapy. Multi‐spectral tomography provides quantification of hemoglobin, oxygen saturation, water, and scatterer particle size and density. These parameters are shown for normal and diseased breast tissue, with an eye toward their pathobiological interpretation. The images of tumors present in breast cancer show significant increases in hemoglobin, water and scattering relative to the corresponding normal tissue, and the results of ongoing clinical trials are presented. The scattering particle size is shown to be correlated to the pathologically measured particle sizes in excised breast tissue, and further model‐based interpretation of the scatter signal may yield important structural information at the nanometer level in tissue, as measured macroscopically with NIR tomography. Imaging of fluorescence from tissue is also possible and is presented, along with a demonstration of how the technological design can be altered to allow video‐rate imaging similar to an ultrasound scanner.