Abstract

Sentinel lymph node biopsy is the gold standard method to detect a metastatic invasion from the primary breast cancer. This method can avoid patients to be submitted to full axillary chain dissection. In this study we present and compare two near-infrared optical probes for the sentinel lymph node detection, based on the recording of scattered photons. The two setups were developed to improve the detection of the dye injected in clinical routine: the Patent Blue V dye. Herein, we present results regarding clinical ex-vivo detection of sentinel lymph node after different volume injections. We have previously published results obtained with a two-wavelength probe on phantom and animal models. However this first generation device did not completely account for the optical absorption variations from biological tissue. Thus, a second generation probe has been equipped with four wavelengths. The dye concentration computation is then more robust to measurement and tissue property fluctuations. The detection threshold of the second setup was estimated at 8.10⁻³ μmol/L, which is about 37 times lower than the eye visibility threshold. We present here the preliminary results and demonstrate the advantages of using four wavelengths compared to two on phantom suspensions simulating the optical properties of breast tissues.

© 2011 OSA/SPIE