Human tissue X-ray diffraction: breast, brain, and prostate

The authors collected small angle X-ray diffraction data from samples of fresh human tissue of prostate, breast and brain. Diffraction at small angles corresponds to large diffracting structures in tissue material. These soft tissues all have different and distinct diffraction patterns. Further, for a particular tissue, patterns from normal and pathological samples are different. Results of this study suggest that soft tissues contain highly ordered "semicrystalline" structures. The structures are different for different types of tissues and in pathological samples. This observation makes diagnostic diffraction studies of soft tissue a plausible new diagnostic application of X-ray diffraction.