Optical detection of cancer stages via finer-focused partial wave spectroscopy (ff-PWS) using tissue microarray samples

• DOI: 10.1364/opticaopen.28605164.v1
• Publication Date: 2025-03-18T07:12:07Z
• Authors: Prabhakar Pradhan; Dhruvil Solanki; Prakash Adhikari; Ishmael Apachigawo; Fatemah Alharthi

We developed mesoscopic-physics-based, further-engineered, finer-focused partial wave spectroscopy (ff-PWS), which can probe the precise scattering volume in cells/tissues to detect nanoscale structural alterations more effectively, even when tissue samples are embedded within different materials. Cancer progression is associated with different genetic and epigenetic events, which result in nano to microscale structural alterations in cells/tissues. However, these structural alterations in the early stage of the disease remain undetectable by conventional microscopy due to the diffraction-limited resolution. With cancer being an epidemic worldwide, techniques for accurate detection of early stages, as well as different stages of cancer, are always in demand. In this work, we first show the increase in the detection efficiency of ff-PWS relative to general PWS, attributed to enhancing the one-dimensional to quasi-one-dimensional backscattering signal. Deadly cancer, such as pancreatic, prostate, breast, and colon cancer tissue microarrays (TMA) samples, paraffin-embedded, containing multiple cores of different stages for each cancer, are analyzed using this further engineered PWS technique. Using ff-PWS and commercially available TMA samples, this quantitative analysis of different cancer stages could enhance and standardize efficient, accurate cancer diagnostics and research.