Raman spectroscopy of breast tissues

Abstract

Breast cancer is one of the leading female cancers. The major drawback of the gold standard of screening, mammography, is the high rate of false reports, aside from the risk from repeated exposure to harmful ionizing radiations. Histopathology, the gold standard of diagnosis, is time consuming and often prone to subjective interpretations. Molecular level diagnosis ‘omics’ is becoming increasingly popular; among these is metabolomics, diagnosis based on ‘metabolic fingerprinting’. In the present article we review a Raman spectroscopic approach to metabolic fingerprinting in breast cancer detection. This review opens with a brief background on anatomical and etiological aspects of breast cancers. We present an overview of conventional detection approaches in breast cancer screening and diagnosis methods, followed by a concise note on the basics of optical spectroscopy and its applications in the screening/diagnosis of breast malignancy. We present the recent developments in Raman spectroscopic diagnosis of breast cancers and also share our experience in Raman spectroscopic classification of normal, benign and malignant breast tissues. Perspectives and current status of Raman spectroscopic screening/diagnosis of breast cancers are also discussed.

Keywords::

• histopathology
• limit test
• mammography
• optical diagnosis
• optical pathology
• optical spectroscopy
• PCA

Acknowledgements

The data presented in the review were acquired from work carried out under the project entitled: “Development of laser spectroscopy techniques for early detection and follow up of therapy in breast malignancy” No. 5/13/23/2003-NCD-III, Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), Government of India. The authors (MVP Chowdary and K Kalyan Kumar) are thankful to ICMR for senior research fellowships. Ms Keerthi and Chethan N Anand are acknowledged for their technical assistance.

Sajan D George is acknowledged for his critical comments and suggestions. We are thankful to TM Nagraj for his illustrations (Figure 1 & 2A) on breast anatomy and Jabalnoski’s depictions. We gratefully acknowledge our senior colleague VB Kartha for his support and encouragement in the execution of the project.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.