Monitoring morphological alterations during invasive ductal breast carcinoma progression using multiphoton microscopy

Morphological alteration of cells and matrices is critical for tumor initiation and progression. Monitoring these alterations during tumor progression is vitally important for making real-time histological diagnoses of tumor staging. In this study, 20 pairs of normal and cancerous human breast tissues were imaged by multiphoton microscopy (MPM), and nuclear area and collagen density were quantified by LSM 5 software (version 3.2). Comparison of MPM images from normal breast tissue with low- and high-grade invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) lesions clearly showed changes in both cellular features and extracellular matrix architecture during IDC development. Moreover, analysis of nuclear area and collagen density established a quantitative link between these two morphological features and progression of IDC. Present results demonstrated that MPM can provide both qualitative and quantitative evaluations of tumor progression. With additional development, this technique has the potential to make real-time histological diagnoses of tumor staging and guide development of efficacious clinical therapies.