Imaging of non-tumorous and tumorous human brain tissues with full-field optical coherence tomography

•Demonstration of full-field optical coherence tomography imaging of human brain samples•Potential as an intraoperative tool for determining tissue architecture and content in minutes•Myelin fibers, neurons, microcalcifications, tumor cells, microcysts, and vessels identified•Good correspondence with histological slides, allowing clinical use for tissue selection

A prospective study was performed on neurosurgical samples from 18 patients to evaluate the use of full-field optical coherence tomography (FF-OCT) in brain tumor diagnosis.FF-OCT captures en face slices of tissue samples at 1 μm resolution in 3D to a penetration depth of around 200 μm. A 1 cm2 specimen is scanned at a single depth and processed in about 5 min. This rapid imaging process is non-invasive and requires neither contrast agent injection nor tissue preparation, which makes it particularly well suited to medical imaging applications.Temporal chronic epileptic parenchyma and brain tumors such as meningiomas, low-grade and high-grade gliomas, and choroid plexus papilloma were imaged. A subpopulation of neurons, myelin fibers and CNS vasculature were clearly identified. Cortex could be discriminated from white matter, but individual glial cells such as astrocytes (normal or reactive) or oligodendrocytes were not observable.This study reports for the first time on the feasibility of using FF-OCT in a real-time manner as a label-free non-invasive imaging technique in an intraoperative neurosurgical clinical setting to assess tumorous glial and epileptic margins.