Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232, Villigen-PSI, Switzerland.
Institute for Biomedical Engineering, ETH Zurich, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2023 Jun 3;13(1):9049. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-35854-6.
Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer worldwide. Diagnosing breast cancer relies on clinical examination, imaging and biopsy. A core-needle biopsy enables a morphological and biochemical characterization of the cancer and is considered the gold standard for breast cancer diagnosis. A histopathological examination uses high-resolution microscopes with outstanding contrast in the 2D plane, but the spatial resolution in the third, Z-direction, is reduced. In the present paper, we propose two high-resolution table-top systems for phase-contrast X-ray tomography of soft-tissue samples. The first system implements a classical Talbot-Lau interferometer and allows to perform ex-vivo imaging of human breast samples with a voxel size of 5.57 μm. The second system with a comparable voxel size relies on a Sigray MAAST X-ray source with structured anode. For the first time, we demonstrate the applicability of the latter to perform X-ray imaging of human breast specimens with ductal carcinoma in-situ. We assessed image quality of both setups and compared it to histology. We showed that both setups made it possible to target internal features of breast specimens with better resolution and contrast than previously achieved, demonstrating that grating-based phase-contrast X-ray CT could be a complementary tool for clinical histopathology.
乳腺癌是全球最常见的癌症类型。乳腺癌的诊断依赖于临床检查、影像学和活检。核心针活检能够对癌症进行形态学和生物化学特征分析，被认为是乳腺癌诊断的金标准。组织病理学检查使用高分辨率显微镜在 2D 平面上具有出色的对比度，但在第三个 Z 方向的空间分辨率降低。在本文中，我们提出了两种用于软组织样本相衬 X 射线层析成像的高分辨率台式系统。第一个系统实现了经典的泰伯-劳（Talbot-Lau）干涉仪，允许对人乳腺样本进行体素尺寸为 5.57μm 的离体成像。第二个系统具有可比的体素尺寸，依赖于具有结构阳极的 Sigray MAAST X 射线源。我们首次证明了后者可用于对原位导管癌的人乳腺标本进行 X 射线成像。我们评估了两种设置的图像质量，并将其与组织学进行了比较。我们表明，两种设置都能够以比以前更高的分辨率和对比度定位乳腺标本的内部特征，表明基于光栅的相衬 X 射线 CT 可能是临床组织病理学的一种补充工具。
