Investigation of the permeability and optical clearing ability of different analytes in human normal and cancerous breast tissues by spectral domain OCT

The potential of OCT applied for early breast cancer detection attracted significant efforts. The permeability coefficients and the percentages of OCT signal enhancement for normal and cancerous breast tissues have been investigated from the experiments of 20% glucose, 40% glucose, and 20% mannitol in vitro. Obtained results indicate that the permeability coefficient in breast cancer tissue is prominently larger than that in normal breast tissue, while the optical clearing effect is just the reverse to that for each agent. The results suggest that OCT has the ability to distinguish cancer tissue from different aspect. ((c) 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)