Terahertz reflectometry imaging for low and high grade gliomas
Authors
Young Bin Ji ; Seung Jae Oh ; Seok-Gu Kang ; Jung Heo ; Sang-Hoon Kim ; Yuna Choi ; Seungri Song ; Hye Young Son ; Se Hoon Kim ; Ji Hyun Lee ; Seung Joo Haam ; Yong Min Huh ; Jong Hee Chang ; Chulmin Joo ; Jin-Suck Suh
Gross total resection (GTR) of glioma is critical for improving the survival rate of glioma patients. One of the greatest challenges for achieving GTR is the difficulty in discriminating low grade tumor or peritumor regions that have an intact blood brain barrier (BBB) from normal brain tissues and delineating glioma margins during surgery. Here we present a highly sensitive, label-free terahertz reflectometry imaging (TRI) that overcomes current key limitations for intraoperative detection of World Health Organization (WHO) grade II (low grade), and grade III and IV (high grade) gliomas. We demonstrate that TRI provides tumor discrimination and delineation of tumor margins in brain tissues with high sensitivity on the basis of Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stained image. TRI may help neurosurgeons to remove gliomas completely by providing visualization of tumor margins in WHO grade II, III, and IV gliomas without contrast agents, and hence, improve patient outcomes.