Due to its superior molecular sensitivity, surgical management of breast cancer now often includes preoperative dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). Nevertheless, statistics indicate that, in practice, tumor size is frequently misestimated leading to incomplete resections, and consequently, repeat surgeries. Our group developed a surgical specimen assessment technique, called intraoperative photoacoustic screening (iPAS), based on photoacoustic tomography and with the capability to visualize whole breast tumors. The system was deployed at a breast surgical center and used to scan freshly excised breast tissue specimens belonging to 12 patients. This report compares breast cancer imaging performance by iPAS to that of DCE-MRI, and pathology.
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