Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

A potential new way of detecting cancers within the breast would be to devise a system that can capture the x-ray diffraction signals of the tissues. The x-ray diffraction signals are contained within the low-angle x-ray scattered field. It has been shown that there exist differences in the x-ray diffraction signals between healthy and cancerous breast tissue. The x-ray diffraction signals of tissues are fingerprints of their molecular and intermolecular structures. The detection of these signals may improve the diagnosis of breast cancers. In our group we have built an energy dispersive x-ray diffractometer in order to measure the x-ray diffraction signals of breast tissue. The results are encouraging.  We intend to do most of our measurements of breast tissue at the Canadian Light Source. The much higher flux will speed up the process and allow us to do simultaneous measurements of small angle and ultra-low angle x-ray scatter signals. In this research proposal we want to use a digital imaging system in conjunction with a CdZnTe detector in order to determine whether we can identify suspicious lesions within thick specimens of breast tissue.  The protocol is as follows. An image of a sample of breast tissue would be captured with a digital camera. Suspicious structures within the specimen would be highlighted by a radiologist.  We would then acquire a CT slice that contains the lesion in order to get its xyz location. We would then use a system of translation stages in order to re-configure our system (x-ray cabinet) into one that can capture the x-ray diffraction signal of the lesion.  This would be accomplished by interrogating the suspicious lesion with a pencil beam of x rays and then detecting the scattered field with a CdZnTe detector. We would simulate the measurement using the diffraction data for breast tissues that we measured with the synchrotron beam.  The breast tissue data that gives a signal that is closest to the measured signal would reveal the tissue type of the lesion. This could lead to a new biomedical x-ray diffraction technology that would be useful to analyze breast biopsies. It could also be extended to analyze suspicious lesions within the breast and thereby provide a means to decrease the number of unecessary breast biopsies.