Copyright
©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Feb 15, 2019; 11(2): 153-160
Published online Feb 15, 2019. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v11.i2.153
Feasibility of terahertz imaging for discrimination of human hepatocellular carcinoma
Feng Duan, Yu-Ye Wang, De-Gang Xu, Jia Shi, Lin-Yu Chen, Li Cui, Yan-Hua Bai, Yong Xu, Jing Yuan, Chao Chang
Feng Duan, Li Cui, Yan-Hua Bai, Department of Interventional Radiology, the General Hospital of Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Beijing 100853, China
Yu-Ye Wang, De-Gang Xu, Jia Shi, Lin-Yu Chen, Institute of Laser and Optoelectronics, School of Precision Instruments and Optoelectronic Engineering, Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Information Science and Technology (Ministry of Education), Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China
Yong Xu, Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgical Oncology the General Hospital of Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Beijing 100853, China
Jing Yuan, Department of Pathology, the General Hospital of Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Beijing 100853, China
Chao Chang, Advanced Interdisciplinary Technology Research Center, National Innovation Institute of Defense Technology, Beijing 100071, China
Author contributions: Duan F, Chang C, Xu DG and Wang YY conceived and designed the study; Shi J and Chen LY performed the experiment; Xu Y, Cui L, Bai YH and Yuan J collected the data and images; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 11622542 and No. 51677145.
Institutional review board statement: This study was reviewed and approved by the General Hospital of People’s Liberation Army Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous data that were obtained after each patient agreed to treatment by written consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest related to this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional unpublished data are available.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to STROBE.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Chao Chang, PhD, Professor, Deputy Director, Advanced Interdisciplinary Technology Research Center, National Innovation Institute of Defense Technology, Fengtai District, Beijing 100071, China. changc@xjtu.edu.cn
Telephone: +86-10-66716436 Fax: +86-10-66716436
Received: September 30, 2018
Peer-review started: September 30, 2018
First decision: December 30, 2018
Revised: January 7, 2019
Accepted: January 8, 2019
Article in press: January 8, 2019
Published online: February 15, 2019
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignant tumors worldwide, and novel methods for early/rapid diagnosis of HCC are needed. Recently, terahertz (THz) spectroscopy is more and more often used for tumor diagnosis; however, most of these reports focus on superficial tissues, and there are few reports on HCC.
Research motivation
Combined with interventional radiology techniques, THz spectroscopy might be a novel modality as an early/fast diagnostic for HCC. Therefore, we conduct this observational study to explore the feasibility of THz imaging for the diagnosis of HCC.
Research objectives
To evaluate the feasibility of THz for discriminating between HCC and normal liver tissues using fresh tissue specimens obtained from HCC patients who had undergone surgery. The goal was to identify if THz could be a novel modality as an early/fast diagnostic for HCC.
Research methods
An observational study was conducted. Normal liver tissue and HCC tissue were cryosectioned into 50 μm-thick slices and placed on cover glass. Two adjacent tissue sections were separately subjected to histopathological examination by hematoxylin and eosin staining (HE staining) or THz transmission examination, and THz images were compared with pathologically mapped images. We determined the typical tumor and normal liver tissue regions by pathological examination; the corresponding areas of adjacent sections were examined by THz transmission.
Research results
The transmission rate of HCC tissue was 0.15-0.25, and the transmission rate of typical HCC tissue was about 0.2. THz transmittance in normal liver tissue was slightly higher than 0.4, but there were many influencing factors, including the degree of liver cirrhosis, fat components, ice crystals in frozen sections, and apoptosis.
Research conclusions
This study shows that THz imaging can identify HCC tissue. Further research will yield more detailed data of THz transmission rates of HCC tissue with different degrees of differentiation. Through our study, we identified that THz could be a novel modality as an early/fast diagnostic for HCC.
Research perspectives
In the future, THz combined with interventional radiology techniques might be a novel modality as an early/fast diagnostic for internal body tissue malignancies.
