CLRC Daresbury's Synchrotron Radiation Department has provided details of its groundbreaking use of scattered x-rays for breast cancer screening, reducing the need for biopsies
The annual report of the Synchrotron Radiation Department at the CLRC Daresbury Laboratory is now available, and details its ongoing multidisciplinary research projects.
The diverse range of projects spans physics, chemistry, materials science, structural biology, engineering, environmental science, and novel applications to medicine and archaeology.
One such medical application is the groundbreaking research using scattered x-rays that has highlighted the potential for creating an automated process for breast cancer screening and reducing the need for biopsies.
X-ray mammography is the current method of screening, which can detect cancers while they are small and before they have spread.
Although highly effective, this technique can only identify abnormalities non-specifically, so a further percutaneous or surgical breast biopsy is required.
However, statistics reveal that less than 20% of women recalled for this assessment following initial screening prove to have cancer. Invasive tumour expansion in breast carcinomas affects the structure of the collagen scaffold, a major component of breast tissue.
Using small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), such changes in collagen structure are now detectable, and may lead to the characterisation of features in X-ray scatter distributions that show potential as disease markers.
If the molecular structure of the collagen is intact, the fraction of X-rays that pass through it appear in the form of peaks or rings, representing the effects of coherent interference caused by the diffracted rays.
Peaks that are strong demonstrate healthy normal tissue, whereas peaks that are weak or diffuse indicate degraded tissue.
The peak intensities have been shown to indicate conclusively which of the collagen specimens were cancerous and which were healthy. Preliminary results suggest that this technique can be used to make accurate assessments of cancerous versus normal breast tissue, and also for the detection of benign tumours.
There is also scope for in vivo application, which would both eliminate the need for breast tissue removal and greatly reduce the analysis time compared to that of current methods.
