Towards Development of LED-Based Time-Domain Near-IR Spectroscopy System for Delineating Breast Cancer From Adjacent Normal Tissue

Currently, the breast cancer diagnosis is performed by microscopic examination of thin slices of ex-vivo biopsy tissue by the pathologist. In this paper, a robust and affordable LED-based time-domain near-infrared spectroscopy system (Spectro-IRTDx) is proposed to further aid the pathologist for rapid and accurate breast cancer diagnosis. The measurements are performed on formalin-fixed cancerous tissues (invasive ductal carcinoma) and their adjacent normal tissues obtained from N = 6 patients. The mean effective attenuation coefficient ( μ
_eff
) for cancerous tissue is found to be 5.41 and 2.41 times higher than adjacent normal tissue, with good statistical significance (p = 0.00216) while operating at 850 nm and 940 nm, respectively. The average detected peak voltage (DPV) for adjacent normal tissue is found to be 3.44 and 4.16 times higher than cancerous tissue, with good statistical significance (p = 0.00216) while operating at 850 nm and 940 nm, respectively. The mean time of flight for cancerous tissue was 46 ns and 4 ns higher than the adjacent normal tissue while operating at 850 nm and 940 nm, respectively, with good statistical significance (p = 0.00216) at 850 nm. The obtained results establish the proof-of-concept of the time-domain near-infrared spectroscopy for rapid diagnosis of core biopsy tissues.