[12a-N405-1~7] 4.6 Terahertz Photonics

▼ [12a-N405-6] Terahertz near-field imaging of highly-malignant early-stage breast cancer

〇(DC)Kosuke Okada¹, Quentin Cassar², Hironaru Murakami¹, Gaetan MacGrogan³, Jean-Paul Guillet², Patrick Mounaix², Masayoshi Tonouchi¹, Kazunori Serita¹ (1.ILE, Osaka Univ., 2.Univ. of Bordeaux, 3.Bergonie Inst.)

Keywords:terahertz, near-field imaging, cancer

Terahertz (THz) imaging has a potential to intraoperatively diagnose breast cancers in a label-free manner. Among breast cancer tissues, it is vital to detect a highly-malignant early-stage breast cancer “comedo ductal carcinoma in situ (comedo-DCIS)”. However, THz imaging of the comedo-DCIS has not been conducted, because the spatial resolution (several millimeters) is insufficient for the analysis of DCIS typically ranging from 50 to 500 µm in size. To solve the problem, we have recently developed a 10 µm-spatial-resolution probe-less terahertz near-field microscope operating based on near-field coupling of a sample and a point THz source generated at a femtosecond laser focusing-spot in a GaAs THz-emitter crystal. In this study, we for the first time succeeded in obtaining THz image of a dehydrated comedo-DCIS without staining. These findings may be a critical step toward realizing the terahertz label-free biopsy of early-stage breast cancer.