Rapid Assessment of Breast Tumor Margins Using Deep Ultraviolet Fluorescence Scanning Microscopy

Significance: Re-excision rates for women with invasive breast cancer undergoing breast conserving surgery (or lumpectomy) have decreased in the past decade but remain substantial. This is mainly due to the inability to assess the entire surface of an excised lumpectomy specimen efficiently and accurately during surgery.

Aim: The goal of this study was to develop a deep-ultraviolet scanning fluorescence microscope (DUV-FSM) that can be used to accurately and rapidly detect cancer cells on the surface of excised breast tissue.

Approach: A DUV-FSM was used to image the surfaces of 47 (31 malignant and 16 normal/benign) fresh breast tissue samples stained in propidium iodide and eosin Y solutions. A set of fluorescence images were obtained from each sample using low magnification (4  ×  ) and fully automated scanning. The images were stitched to form a color image. Three nonmedical evaluators were trained to interpret and assess the fluorescence images. Nuclear-cytoplasm ratio (N/C) was calculated and used for tissue classification.

Results: DUV-FSM images a breast sample with subcellular resolution at a speed of 1.0  min  /  cm2. Fluorescence images show excellent visual contrast in color, tissue texture, cell density, and shape between invasive carcinomas and their normal counterparts. Visual interpretation of fluorescence images by nonmedical evaluators was able to distinguish invasive carcinoma from normal samples with high sensitivity (97.62%) and specificity (92.86%). Using N/C alone was able to differentiate patch-level invasive carcinoma from normal breast tissues with reasonable sensitivity (81.5%) and specificity (78.5%).

Conclusions: DUV-FSM achieved a good balance between imaging speed and spatial resolution with excellent contrast, which allows either visual or quantitative detection of invasive cancer cells on the surfaces of a breast surgical specimen.