Feasibility of interstitial ex-vivo mammary autofluorescne microendoscopy

In the past decades our knowledge of breast cancer has been rapidly evolving yet the basic paradigm of diagnosis and treatment of cancer has not. In cancer diagnosis, presentation of breast cancer can be a palpable lump or a suspicious mass on screening imaging, namely a mammogram. However, malignancy will be ascertained by tissue biopsy if needed. Biopsy is the gold standard breast cancer diagnostic test. Biopsy sampling is invasive, painful and costly. In addition, when the interpretation of current imaging modalities is not concordant with pathology results the biopsies may have to be repeated. Microendoscopy autofluorescence (AM) is a method of acquiring images directly from the tissues that contain fluorescent susceptible molecules (fluorophore). Studies of endoscopy in colon and esophagus showed that AM imaging is capable to recognize malignancy and can be utilized to discriminate between normal tissue and tumor. Additionally, it has been shown that, AM was able to differentiate cancer versus normal cells when a microendoscope was inserted into a breast duct. The main purpose of this study is to investigate if the same contrast exists if AM applied interstitially into the ex-vivo mastectomy breast tissues. This is a feasibility study to explore if interstitial AM has the potential to be coupled with breast cancer imaging diagnostics to provide better discrimination of the characteristics of the target tissue inside. The success in this approach could significantly reduce the number of required tissue biopsies to confirm the diagnosis.