Discrimination Between Normal and Malignant Breast Tissues by Synchronous Luminescence Spectroscopy

Studies of fluorescence from endogenous molecules in tissues are common for applications such as detection or characterization of early disease. Breast cancer is one of the most common malignant tumor among women and good screening methods are therefore of considerable interest. We have applied synchronous luminescence spectroscopy (SLS) to examine specimens of excised breast tissues. Measurements have been made in the 330 nm to 650 nm range of excitation wavelengths and constant wavelength interval varying from 30 nm to 120 nm on 21 normal and 21 malignant breast tissue samples. Significant differences between SLS patterns of normal and malignant tissues are detected and related to the discrepancy in concentrations of extracellular proteins and co-enzymes. Malignant tissue identification criteria are established on the basis of spectral peak areas of SLS spectra that correspond to constant wavelength intervals where the most pronounced differences are observed. These characteristic intervals are chosen from the difference of averaged three-dimensional SLS patterns of normal and malignant breast tissues. Using observed statistically significant spectral differences as classification criteria we tested classification success rate of presented SLS method.