title: Optical characterization of thin female breast biopsies based on the reduced scattering coefficient.
abstract: One of the main goals in optical characterization of biopsies is to discern between tissue types. Usually, the theory used for deriving the optical properties of such highly scattering media is based on the diffusion approximation. However, biopsies are usually small in size compared to the transport mean free path and thus cannot be treated with standard diffusion theory. To account for this, an improved theory was developed, by the authors, that can correctly describe light propagation in small geometries (Garofalakis et al 2004 J. Opt. A: Pure Appl. Opt. 6 725-35). The theory's limit was validated by both Monte Carlo simulations and experiments performed on tissue-like phantoms, and was found to be two transport mean free paths. With the aid of this theory, we have characterized 59 samples of breast tissue including cancerous samples by retrieving their reduced scattering coefficients from time-resolved transmission data. The mean values for the reduced scattering coefficients of the normal and the tumour tissue were measured to be 9.7 +/- 2.2 cm(-1) and 10.8 +/- 1.8 cm(-1), respectively. The correlation with age was also investigated.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser, Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas, PO Box 1527, 71110 Heraklion, Greece. agarof@iesl.forth.gr
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Garofalakis
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zacharakis
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Filippidis
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sanidas
authors.forename: D D
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Tsiftsis
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Stathopoulos
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kafousi
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ripoll
authors.forename: T G
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Papazoglou
mesh_terms: D000273:Adipose Tissue / Q000473:pathology; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000465:Algorithms; D044963:Biopsy, Fine-Needle; D001940:Breast / Q000473:pathology*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007834:Lasers; D008875:Middle Aged; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D055095:Optics and Photonics; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D012542:Scattering, Radiation