Delineation and detection of breast cancer using novel label-free fluorescence

BACKGROUND: Accurate diagnosis of breast cancer (BC) plays a crucial role in clinical pathology analysis and ensuring precise surgical margins to prevent recurrence. METHODS: Laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) technology offers high sensitivity to tissue biochemistry, making it a potential tool for noninvasive BC identification. In this study, we utilized hyperspectral (HS) imaging data of stimulated BC specimens to detect malignancies based on altered fluorescence characteristics compared to normal tissue. Initially, we employed a HS camera and broadband spectrum light to assess the absorbance of BC samples. Notably, significant absorbance differences were observed in the 440–460 nm wavelength range. Subsequently, we developed a specialized LIF system for BC detection, utilizing a low-power blue laser source at 450 nm wavelength for ten BC samples. RESULTS: Our findings revealed that the fluorescence distribution of breast specimens, which carries molecular-scale structural information, serves as an effective marker for identifying breast tumors. Specifically, the emission at 561 nm exhibited the greatest variation in fluorescence signal intensity for both tumor and normal tissue, serving as an optical predictive biomarker. To enhance BC identification, we propose an advanced image classification technique that combines image segmentation using contour mapping and K-means clustering (K-mc, K = 8) for HS emission image data analysis. CONCLUSIONS: This exploratory work presents a potential avenue for improving "in-vivo" disease characterization using optical technology, specifically our LIF technique combined with the advanced K-mc approach, facilitating early tumor diagnosis in BC. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12880-023-01095-2.