Solid breast tumors phantom emulating oxy and deoxyhemoglobin concentrations for near infrared imaging

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Optics
• Medical Imaging
• Cancer Diagnostics

Background:

• Continuous-wave near-infrared spectroscopy (CW-NIRS) is a non-invasive technique for breast cancer diagnosis.
• Phantoms are crucial for evaluating NIRS experimental approaches and diagnostic equipment.
• Existing phantoms using biological chromophores require special storage and degrade over time.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop stable, artificial phantoms that emulate benign and malignant breast tumors.
• To assess the feasibility of using artificial absorbents to mimic hemoglobin concentrations in tumors.
• To enable discrimination between benign and malignant tumors using CW-NIRS.

Main Methods:

• Constructed tumor phantoms using epoxy resin with two artificial absorbents.
• Emulated absorption curves of oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin for fibroadenoma and adenocarcinoma.
• Performed CW transmittance NIRS experiments and compared results with Monte Carlo simulations.

Main Results:

• Successfully created tumor phantoms that accurately reproduce target absorption properties.
• Retrieved absorbent concentrations from NIRS experiments closely matched proposed values.
• Demonstrated the feasibility of emulating both fibroadenoma and adenocarcinoma inclusions.

Conclusions:

• Validated tumor phantoms effectively emulate benign and malignant breast tumors.
• NIRS experiments showed strong agreement with Monte Carlo simulations.
• Developed a method to map absorbent concentrations using diffuse imaging, suitable for testing mammography equipment and algorithms.