Terahertz Attenuated Total Reflection Imaging Of Fresh Brain Tumor

In this paper, we demonstrated that tumors in freshly excised whole brain tissue could be differentiated clearly from normal brain tissue using a homemade continuous terahertz (THz) wave attenuated total reflection (ATR) imaging system. The resolution of this system was about 400 mu mx450 mu m at 2.52THz. The terahertz images characters of fresh brains with tumor was studied using this THz-ATR imaging system. Tumor regions could be differentiated clearly from normal brain tissue by THz intensity imaging at different frequencies. The high absorption regions in THz images corresponded well to the tumor regions in the hematoxylin and eosin-stained microscopic images. Moreover, the morphological reconstruction method was applied to restore the blurred imaging results. The noise caused by power fluctuation in THz-ATR image was almost eliminated and the visibility of objects has been successfully enhanced. These promising results suggest that THz-ATR imaging could be used as a tool for label-free and real-time imaging of brain tumors, which would be great potential as an alternative method for the fast diagnosis tumor region during brain surgery.