Cancer Prognosis with Tissue Birefringence Measured by Label-Free Quantitative Microscopy
Mariia Aleksandrovych1, Chelsea Yu2, Min Xu1
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Hunter College and The Graduate Center, The City University of New York
2Department of Chemistry, Hunter College, The City University of New York, 695 Park Ave., New York, USA
The interactions between light and cells, including scattering and absorption, are the foundation for modern quantitative microscopy techniques to quantify their biochemical, functional, and morphological properties. Cancer diagnosis and prognosis with the inherent structural alterations have recently emerged as one promising approach toward more accurate histopathology. The disorganization and the degradation of the collagen fibers have been shown to be correlated with cancer progression and metastasis. We hypothesize that the differences in the microscopic collagen organization measured by quantitative microscopy (birefringence and angular dispersion of collagen fibers) can be used to distinguish aggressive versus non-aggressive cancer.
Triple-negative breast cancer and prostate cancer tissue specimens obtained from Weill Cornell Medical College were imaged using a novel quantitative Differential Phase Contrast (DPC) microscopy at the Biomedical Photonics Laboratory (BPL). Our custom DPC microscope can measure both quantitative phase (cellular mass distribution) and birefringence (structural anisotropy) label-free. The results of the measurements were analyzed using MATLAB to quantify birefringence strengths and their angular dispersion. Statistical analysis was conducted using Excel.
Our findings show a positive correlation between the birefringence and angular dispersion against the recurrent time (the time elapsed until cancer reappeared) for aggressive (recurrent time <5 years) and non-aggressive (>5 years) cancerous tissue. The results reveal that collagen degradation and disorganization increase with the aggressiveness of cancer and highlight the role of collagen organization in cancer aggressiveness assessment.
