Biochemical “decoding” of breast ultrasound images with optoacoustic tomography fusion: First-in-human display of lipid and collagen signals on breast ultrasound

To date, studies which utilized ultrasound (US) and optoacoustic tomography (OT) fusion (US-OT) in biochemical differentiation of malignant and benign breast conditions have relied on limited biochemical data such as oxyhaemoglobin (OH) and deoxyhaemoglobin (DH) only. There has been no data of the largest biochemical components of breast fibroglandular tissue: lipid and collagen. Here, the authors believe the ability to image collagen and lipids within the breast tissue could serve as an important milestone in breast US-OT imaging with many potential downstream clinical applications. Hence, we would like to present the first-in-human US-OT demonstration of lipid and collagen differentiation in an excised breast tissue from a 38-year-old female.