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Background: The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether the changes in optically derived parameters acquired with a diffuse optical tomography breast imager system (DOTBIS) in the contralateral non-tumor-bearing breast in patients administered neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) for breast cancer are associated with pathologic complete response (pCR).Methods: In this retrospective evaluation of 105 patients with stage II-III breast cancer, oxy-hemoglobin (ctO2Hb) from the contralateral non-tumor-bearing breast was collected and analyzed at different time points during NAC. The earliest monitoring imaging time point was after 2-3 weeks receiving taxane. Longitudinal data were analyzed using linear mixed-effects modeling to evaluate the contralateral breast ctO2Hb changes across chemotherapy when corrected for pCR status, age, and BMI.Results: Patients who achieved pCR to NAC had an overall decrease of 3.88 μM for ctO2Hb (95% CI, 1.39 to 6.37 μM), p = .004, after 2-3 weeks. On the other hand, non-pCR subjects had a non-significant mean reduction of 0.14 μM (95% CI, - 1.30 to 1.58 μM), p > .05. Mixed-effect model results indicated a statistically significant negative relationship of ctO2Hb levels with BMI and age.Conclusions: This study demonstrates that the contralateral normal breast tissue assessed by DOTBIS is modifiable after NAC, with changes associated with pCR after only 2-3 weeks of chemotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffuse optical tomography (DOT) is a noninvasive, nonionizing imaging modality that uses near-infrared light to visualize optically relevant chromophores. A recently developed dynamic DOT imaging system enables the study of hemodynamic effects in the breast during a breath-hold. Dynamic DOT imaging was performed in a total of 21 subjects (age 54 ± 10 years) including 3 healthy subjects and 18 subjects with benign (n = 8) and malignant (n = 14) masses. Three-dimensional time-series images of the percentage change in oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin concentrations ([HbO2] and [Hb]) from baseline are obtained over the course of a breath-hold. At a time point of 15 s following the end of the breath-hold, [Hb] in healthy breasts has returned to near-baseline values (1.6% ± 0.5%), while tumor-bearing breasts have increased levels of [Hb] (6.8% ± 3.6%, p < 0.01). Further, healthy subjects have a higher correlation between the breasts over the course of the breath-hold as compared with the subjects with breast cancer (healthy: 0.96 ± 0.02; benign: 0.89 ± 0.02; malignant: 0.78 ± 0.23, p < 0.05). Therefore this study shows that dynamic features extracted from DOT measurements can differentiate healthy and diseased breast tissues. These features provide a physiologic method for identifying breast cancer without the need for ionizing radiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]