Original investigationFine Structure of Breast Tissue on Micro Computed Tomography: A Feasibility Study
Section snippets
Materials and methods
Approval for use of biopsy specimens was given by the heads of pathology, radiology, and gynecology of the university clinic, in accordance with the requirements of the State Ministry of Science and Arts of the country. All patients gave informed consent to use one specimen for study purposes.
Results
On histology, seven patients who underwent vacuum-assisted stereotactic core biopsy had extensive ductal carcinoma in situ with focal microinvasion, three patients had invasive ductal carcinomas, and five patients had benign fibrocystic changes.
On the 1.7-fold magnified radiograms of the biopsy specimens only the microcalcifications could be detected in otherwise uniformly dense soft tissue (Fig 1a). At micro CT, however, the visual appearance of the soft-tissue architecture closely
Discussion
The aim of the study was to evaluate the feasibility of micro CT to differentiate the breast tissue components from vacuum-assisted core needle biopsy specimens. Our micro CT system had a minimal digital voxel size of 8.4 μm and a spatial resolution of 17 μm. We found that the visual examination of the high-resolution micro CT images allowed the distinction between parenchyma, adipose tissue, and tumor at a microstructure level comparable to low-power histological sections. With magnification
Conclusion
Micro CT is feasible for the visualization and differentiation of breast tissue components in core needle biopsy specimen. Further studies should investigate whether the diagnostic accuracy is improved if micro CT is performed prior to the histological workup to concentrate histological slicing on suspicious areas detected by micro CT.
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