Non-Invasive Monitoring of Breast Tumor Oxygenation: A Key to Tumor Therapy Planning and Tumor Prognosis

摘要

The overall goal of this research project is to develop and evaluate a new approach to monitoring of oxygenated hemoglobin concentration (HbO2) of breast tumors under respiratory interventions using near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy and imaging techniques. The aims have included (1) to evaluate a single-channel, dual wavelength, NIR, frequency-domain oximeter and the algorithms for obtaining tumor HbO2 against tumor PO2 measured by 19F magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), (2) to modify the single-channel system into a 3- channel NIR system, (3) to investigate heterogeneity of HbO2 in breast tumors using the 3-channel NIR system, and (4) to study the influence of three interventions on HbO2 and PO2 of the breast tumors. We have accomplished all of the proposed aims and compared the optical method with concurrent measurements of tumor oxygen tension using oxygen needle electrodes, fiber optic needle systems (FOXY), and 19F MRI. Overall, we conclude that NIR techniques could be a useful non-invasive monitoring tool for breast tumor oxygenation, which is a key to breast tumor therapy planning and tumor prognosis. Furthermore, the need for NIR imaging is obvious and is our current research development in order to fully characterize static and dynamic heterogeneity of breast tumor vasculature under therapeutic interventions.