Raman spectroscopy of breast tissues

摘要

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