Terahertz Pulsed Imaging of Paraffin-Embedded Human Breast Cancer Tissue

Terahertz (THz) Pulsed Imaging (TPI) uses THz radiation for imaging biological tissue. In particular, this technique has shown potential for identifying human breast cancer during breast-conserving surgery (BCS) [1,2]. A key issue of BCS is the more than 20% rate of reoperation after postoperative histopathological analysis of the cancer resection margins [3], which results from the current lack of accurate intraoperative cancer margins assessment tools.
As part of the Tera4All project consortium that aims to promote THz technology applications across the Walloon Region of Belgium, our goal is to investigate the use and validation of TPI in breast cancer margins assessment, in the context of reducing the re-operation rate of BCS. In this preliminary work, we study the TPI of PE excised human breast cancer tissue sections.