Spectral characterization of breast cancer

Mortality due to breast cancer is on the decline particularly in the western world because of early detection technique such as mammography. In spite of the real success, this has its limitation because women needs to get exposed to ionizing radiation and many women in the eastern world would not like to be subjected to such breast exposure due to cultural inhibitions. In addition, the sensitivity is not more than 75%. In this context, research in optical biopsy is in the forefront since it is minimally invasive and done with non ionizing radiation. The laser beam could be launched through a hair thin fiber and the scattered radiation obtained from the sample could give spatially resolved information about the biochemical nature of the breast cancer sample. What is more important, the optical biopsy could be done based on spectral analysis of blood plasma itself so that in the long run a large segment of prospective women even in the rural areas can be screened just by blood analyses. The objective of our research is to evolve one such protocol and the first step is the spectral characterization of in vitro optical analyses of breast cancer samples. This is only the proof of the concept from a limited number of samples.