In situ research and diagnosis of breast cancer by using HOF-ATR-FTIR spectroscopy.

To accurately investigate in situ breast cancer would be very significant for real-time information and in situ diagnosis. In this in situ study, home-made hollow optical fiber attenuated total reflection (HOF-ATR) probe was integrated into Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopic system to perform breast cancer research at molecular level. Based on the FTIR spectral analysis on band shifts and absorbance ratios, it's disclosed that the molecular structure, conformation and content of main components change with cancerization of breast tissue. Fisher's discriminant analysis on HOF-ATR-FTIR spectra was applied to identify the healthy and cancerous breast tissues for the first time. The identification accuracy was 96.67% for training group and 93.33% for cross-validation, respectively, as well as 95% for the prediction group. This paper provides much in situ information of tissue cancerization at molecular level, which can be used as fingerprint biomarkers of tissue cancerization for in situ diagnosis. HOF-ATR-FTIR spectroscopy with discriminant analysis has potential to be an effective and promising method in in situ biomedical research and monitoring of breast cancer.