Near-infrared spectral imaging of the breast for cancer detection and monitoring

描述（由申请人提供）：该项目涉及（1）开发一种用于人类乳腺光学成像的新型仪器，以及（2）试点临床试验，以证明所提出的仪器在检测乳腺癌和监测乳腺癌新辅助治疗反应方面的有效性。所提出的仪器具有空间采样水平（在x-y扫描平面上为25个点/cm 2）、光谱采样水平（在650-1000 nm的波长带上为0.5个点/nm）和时间分辨率水平（20个全光谱/s），这是任何现有的光学乳腺X射线摄影仪器都不能同时实现的。这些仪器功能将用于增强光学乳房X线照片在空间信息（深度辨别、血红蛋白/水/脂质/散射参数分布的断层扫描重建）、定量血氧测定和时间血流动力学表征方面的信息内容。计划的临床试验将专门检验以下假设：乳腺组织中血红蛋白、水、脂质和散射参数提供的固有光学对比度允许检测乳腺癌、区分乳腺癌与良性乳腺病变，以及监测乳腺癌新辅助治疗的有效性。该应用的广泛目标是开发光学乳腺X射线摄影作为乳腺癌检测和监测治疗有效性的独立临床工具。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project involves (1) the development of a novel instrument for optical imaging of the human breast, and (2) pilot clinical tests to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed instrument in detecting breast cancer and monitoring response to neoadjuvant therapy of breast cancer. The proposed instrument features levels of spatial sampling (25 points/cm2 on the x-y scanning plane), spectral sampling (0.5 points/nm over the wavelength band 650-1000 nm), and temporal resolution (20 full spectra/s) that are not simultaneously achieved by any existing optical mammography instrument. These instrumentation capabilities will be used to enhance the information content of optical mammograms in terms of spatial information (depth discrimination, tomographic reconstruction of hemoglobin/water/lipid/scattering-parameters distributions), quantitative oximetry, and temporal hemodynamics characterization. The planned clinical tests will specifically test the hypothesis that intrinsic optical contrast provided by hemoglobin, water, lipids, and scattering parameters in breast tissue allows for the detection of breast cancer, its discrimination from benign breast lesions, and for monitoring effectiveness of neoadjuvant breast cancer therapy. The broad objective of this application is the development of optical mammography as a stand-alone clinical tool for breast cancer detection, and for monitoring effectiveness of therapy.