Covering All Angles

Most of your cells aren't free-floating. They sit in an extracellular matrix (ECM), which includes collagen fibres. As cancerous tumours grow, they remodel these fibres. Detecting this change could help diagnose cancer. However, these changes can’t be easily seen using the traditional method pathologists use to stain thin sections of tissue for cancer, H&E. Now, using polarimetric second-harmonic generation (P-SHG) microscopy combined with texture analysis, the team successfully reveal changes in collagen using H&E tissue sections. H&E images of human breast tissue – normal (top row) and cancerous (rows 2–4) – captured using traditional bright field microscopy were digitally processed to highlight collagen alone (first column). Next, the H&E tissue sections were imaged using P-SHG and digitally processed to highlight different collagen fibre characteristics (columns 2–5). This revealed significant differences between normal and cancerous tissue. Subsequent tests found this approach reliably detected cancer, highlighting its potential in diagnostics.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image adapted from work by Kamdin Mirsanaye and colleagues
• Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Scientific Reports, June 2022