Raman spectroscopy: development of clinical applications for breast cancer diagnosis

摘要

Currently breast cancer diagnosis is made clinically through triple assessment: annual clinical breast examination, x-ray mammography or breast ultrasound imaging, and biopsy. The majority of women with suspicious breast lesions undergo either stereotactic (needle) or surgical (excisional) biopsy. Due to a high incidence of "false positives" at clinical breast diagnosis and "false negatives" at surgery, a large number of women undergo unnecessary and costly breast surgery. We describe our program of development of techniques and instrumentation for clinical application of NIR Raman spectroscopy for improved breast cancer diagnosis.