Low coherence quantitative phase microscopy with machine learning model and Raman spectroscopy for the study of...

Early-stage detection of breast cancer is the primary requirement in modern healthcare as it is the most common cancer among women worldwide. Histopathology is the most widely preferred method for the diagnosis of breast cancer, but it requires long processing time and involves qualitative assessment of cancer by a trained person/doctor. Here, we present an alternate technique based on white light interference microscopy (WLIM) and Raman spectroscopy, which has the capability to differentiate between cancerous and normal breast tissue. WLIM provides quantitative phase information about the biological tissues/cells, whereas Raman spectroscopy can detect changes in their molecular structure and chemical composition during cancer growth. Further, both the techniques can be implemented very quickly without staining the sample. The present technique is employed to perform ex vivo study on a total of 80 normal and cancerous tissue samples collected from 16 different patients. A generalized machine learning model is developed for the classification of normal and cancerous tissues, which is based on texture features obtained from phase maps with an accuracy of 90.6%. The correlation of outcomes from these two techniques can open a new avenue for fast and accurate detection of cancer without any trained personnel.