Fundamental studies of breast tumor detection with narrow beam laser scanning (report 1)

Fundamental studies were performed in which halogen parallel lights and narrow beam He-Ne laser scanning were applied to the image diagnosis of breast lesions. The breast tissue was simulated by fresh milk as an opaque material. With halogen parallel lights, objects close to the light could not be detected, objects in the center were slightly detectable, and those close to the detector were visualized distinctly. Narrow beam scanning with He-Ne laser produced contrasting results: the closer the object was to the light, the better its detectability. However, as the diameter of the object decreased, detectability worsened. The results of the experiments indicated that small lesions in the opaque breast tissue may be detected by He-Ne laser with narrow beam scanning.