Towards virtual histology with X-ray grating interferometry


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Date

2023-06-03

Publication Type

Journal Article

ETH Bibliography

yes

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Abstract

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.

Publication status

published

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Volume

13 (1)

Pages / Article No.

9049

Publisher

Nature

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Subject

Organisational unit

03817 - Stampanoni, Marco F.M. / Stampanoni, Marco F.M. check_circle

Notes

Funding

159263 - X-ray phase-contrast micro computed tomography for improved pathology (SNF)
183568 - GI-BCT - Clinical Grating Interferometry Breast Computed Tomography (SNF)
ETH-12 20-2 - ELISABETH-X: dEep Learning drIven X-ray phaSe contrAst BrEast TomograpHy (ETHZ)

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