ISSN 1054-660X, Laser Physics, 2012, Vol. 22, No. 8, pp. 1–6. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2012. Original Text © Astro, Ltd., 2012. 1 1 1. INTRODUCTION According to cancer report of 2008, breast cancer comprised 22.9% of all cancers in all over the world [1]. Clinical examination, mammography, needle or surgical biopsy is the most common steps of early detection and diagnosis and this has significantly reduced the morbidity and mortality. Surgical biopsies have long been the gold standard for determining whether growths are cancerous or benign. But at least three out of four biopsies following mammograms conclude that observed abnormalities are benign and that no intervention is needed. In case of surgical biopsy, stress on patients and additional cost of recu- peration are serious concerns. In this context, optical biopsy based on optical coherence tomography (OCT), fluorescence diagnosis (FD) are expected to do paradigm shift in diagnosis. The OCT is optical analogue to ultrasound imaging, with resolution approaching that of histology. In breast tissues, regions of tumor, tumor margins, abnormal ducts, and foci of tumor cells can be identified based on increased scat- tering and morphological inhomogenities [2–5]. Flu- orescence diagnosis (FD) of cancer finds use in wide spectrum of medical disciplines such as urology, der- matology, gynecology and neurology. FD is based on the application of 5 δ ALA, a heme precursor which induces the endogenous accumulation of efficient photo sensitizer which can be easily identified by the characteristic fluorescence [6–11]. Apart from the above mentioned labeled fluorescence, Alfano et al. 1 The article is published in the original. demonstrated the potency of laser spectroscopy for detection of breast cancer by native luminescence of tissues [12]. Subsequently such studies have been extended to prostate cancer tissue by Masilamani et al. [13]. Breast Cancer is a disease of humans and other mammals, originating from breast tissue most com- monly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lob- ules. Women, especially in the age groups of 40–50, are more affected, as compared to the rest. Cancers originating from ducts are assigned as mammary duc- tal carcinomas, and those originating from lobules are named as lobular carcinomas. In the current study, we have selected a set of nor- mal (N = 7), benign (N = 2), and malignant (ductal carcinoma N = 10) tissue samples. We have obtained fluorescence emission spectrum (FES), Stokes’ shift spectrum (SSS), and synchronous emission spectrum (SES) for all samples. Results are based on the relative intensity of bio fluorophores like tryptophan, tyrosine, collagen elastin, flavin, etc. This study provides signif- icant discriminatory spectral features in the three sets so that it paves way for the screening of breast cancer. 2. MATERIALS AND METHOD Excised breast tissue pieces were obtained by breast surgery from 19 patients of King Khalid University Hospital (KKUH) and King Faisal Specialist Hospital and research Center (KFSH &RC), Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Before launching into research, the institutional review board ethical committee clearance LASER METHODS IN CHEMISTRY, BIOLOGY, AND MEDICINE Optical Biopsy of Breast Cancer Tissue 1 M. S. AlSalhi a, d, *, S. Ben Amer b , K. Farhat c , D. Rabah c , S. Devanesan a , M. Atif a, f , V. Masilamani a , and Reem. K. S. Al-Dakheel e a Research Chair on Laser Diagnosis of Cancers, King Saud University, Riyadh, KSA b King Faisal Research Centre, King Faisal Hospital Riyadh, KSA c Princess Johara Al-Ibrahim Research Centre for Prostate Cancer, College of Medicine, King Khalid University Hospital, King Saud University Riyadh, KSA d Department of Physics and Astronomy, King Saud University, College of Science, Riyadh, KSA e Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dammam University, College of Science, Al-Khobar, KSA f National Institute of Laser and Optronics, Nilore, Islamabad, Pakistan *e-mail: malsalhy@gmail.com Received October 27, 2011; in final form November 2, 2011; published online July 9, 2012 Abstract—In this paper, we report results of Fluorescence Emission Spectra (FES) and Stokes Shift Spectra (SSS) of 19 cancer tissue of invasive ductal carcinoma of different grades in comparison with normal breast tissues (obtained away from tumor regions). We were able to get distinct differences in the spectral features of normal and malignant tissues in terms of the ratios of concentrations of biomolecules like tryptophan, col- lagen and NADH. The sensitivity and specificity were in the range of 75%. What was all the more important was the parallelism in the spectral features of normal and malignant breast tissue pieces of above set of sub- jects. The objective of our research is to evolve one such protocol and the first step is the spectral character- ization of in vitro optical analyses of excised tumor tissues. DOI: 10.1134/S1054660X12080014