3D histology allows visualization of a tissue’s structure in three dimensions with high resolution which can be utilized in detection of diseased or injured areas of the tissue or in examination of different organs, tissues or cellular structures in more accurate manner than by conventional histology. With conventional histology, it is not possible to analyse all of the connections between cells since the third dimension is not taken into account.
In addition, it requires high amount of work and time to process the tissue slices and analyse them with a microscope, and it is usually done by a highly experienced person.
However, the studied 3D methods also require expertise and time, but the advantage of them is the automate functioning after the imaging settings have been chosen properly.
In this thesis, techniques and applications of micro-CT, SPIM and SBF-SEM have been discussed based on previous studies. Table 2 in chapter 5.4 contains a summary of the methods in the field of breast cancer detection, and table 3, which combines the general information of each 3D histology method, can be found below. As existent research of each method was studied, we could notice that each method has a wide range of appli-cations in medical field. Micro-CT has been implemented to imaging both soft and hard tissue types, such as bones, teeth, lungs and different biological implants. In addition, visualization and detection of tumours in breast tissue has been noticed to be possible with the current resolution of micro-CT devices. Results of several studies were encour-aging as the margin status and tumour size detection appeared to be even more accurate than currently used methods, such as MRI or histopathological survey. However, some challenges still exist, and therefore improvements in resolution, scanning time and au-tomatization are needed in order to make micro-CT practicable to use during a breast surgery. On the other hand, SPIM has been applied especially to cell detection during tumour genesis within cell cultures or living embryos which is advantageous as, for in-stance, the development process of breast cancer is studied. In addition, with some mod-ifications to the imaging system, SPIM is usable in margin status determination, although currently only as a surface view. The third method, SBF-SEM, has some limitations, such as the small specimen size and requirement of challenging preparation, but it can also achieve the highest resolution of the studied methods in this thesis. As it is a new ap-proach in medical field, imaging of breast tissue or tumours has not been implemented yet. However, SBF-SEM can reach the level of a single cell and visualize structures in-side a cell and it seems that such information could be also useful especially in scientific associations.
Method Energy Table 3. Summary of different 3D histology methods.
Comparison of the 3D methods is rather difficult since they operate on different scales.
The selection of a suitable method is dependent on what is the target of study and which structures are desired to be visualized. Anyhow, it seems that there are still some prop-erties that need to be improved in each method, such as the resolution of micro-CT and the limited sample size of both SPIM and SBF-SEM. The amount of preparation needed for micro-CT is the smallest of all of the methods, while SBF-SEM requires the most. In addition, the number of different applications seems to be the highest for micro-CT, but the potential of SPIM and SBF-SEM may be uncovered as research continues.
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