Clinical photoacoustic computed tomography of breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy

At present, there is no reliable non-invasive imaging modality accepted as the routine method to assess response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC). Using photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT), we imaged breast cancer patients at three time points: before, during, and after NAC. We measured the tumor size, blood vascular density, and irregularity in the distribution and morphology of the blood vessels on PACT. We used these measurements to accurately identify response to NAC as confirmed by the histopathological diagnosis. We demonstrate PACT’s near-term potential as a diagnostic tool for assessing breast cancer response to systemic treatment by non-invasively measuring the changes in cancer-associated angiogenesis.