Brillouin microscopy in cancer research: a review

Cancer is one of the leading diseases worldwide, continuing to pose a significant financial burden to national health systems and taking lives. These drive the development of early-stage cancer diagnostics, which is believed to be a crucial step in improving patients' life expectancy and long-term outcomes of cancer treatments.

In this review, we explore the potential of a label-free technique known as Brillouin microscopy, a type of optical elastography, emerging as a promising candidate for early-stage cancer screening.

We discuss the main principles of this advanced imaging technology and provide a thorough analysis of all known Brillouin microscopy reports in application to cancer research and diagnostics. In our analysis, we focus on the mechanobiological aspect of the disease and draw conclusions based on four main sample types: cell cultures, cells in microfluidic environments, organoids, and excised tissues.

We review recent advancements in cancer detection, finding that the technique can consistently biomechanically delineate between healthy and unhealthy cells, and organoids and tissues across multiple cancer types. We also present strides made in imaging mechanical changes in cancer during varying stages of progression, treatment, and regression.

We conclude this review with our perspective on the key developments required for technology's translation into the clinical realm, including measurement standardization, inclusion of statistical and artificial intelligence methods into data analysis and automated diagnosis, and further hardware developments needed for in situ and in vivo micromechanical measurements.