Rapid on-site biopsy adequacy evaluation

Every year, more than 5 million patients in the U.S. undergo biopsy procedures to get definitive cancer diagnoses. The goal of the biopsy procedure is to get a sample that is representative of the suspected cancerous region. However, often patients need repeat procedures because the biopsies were not representative of the suspected area. Many biopsy procedures incorporate a rapid on-site evaluation (ROSE) technique for quality assurance of the sample using touch-imprint cytology. However, the current ROSE does not give a clear picture of the quality of biopsy because the technique only allows evaluation of less than 1% of the cells that have “fallen off” of the biopsy. As a result, ROSE is inaccurate much of the time, leading to costly and painful repeat procedures. Furthermore, ROSE depletes DNA content from the biopsies, impacting downstream molecular analysis and genetic sequencing. We use structured illumination microscopy (SIM) to digitally images biopsy samples without destruction at subcellular resolution within seconds of removal, using simple fluorescent stains. SIM provides an exact picture of the intact biopsy, providing improved ROSE accuracy over current methods. Current projects are focused on using SIM to image renal, prostate, and lung biopsies for cancer evaluation and liver biopsies for transplant evaluation.