Dynamic imaging system for mechanical and spectral properties estimation

Mechanical and spectral properties of tumor can be used in detecting breast cancer and characterizing the malignancy of tumor. In this study, we develop a Dynamic Imaging System (DIS) for estimating the mechanical (size, depth, and elastic modulus) and spectral (absorption coefficient) properties of embedded objects. The dynamic imaging system consists of a near infra-red light source with a Tactile Imaging Sensor (TIS) as detector, a source-detector maneuvering system, and a laptop as optical data acquisition unit. The source-detector geometry is controlled for collecting diffuse optical information, which we termed as dynamic imaging. This system determines absorption coefficient, and along with tactile information produces improved depth, and elastic modulus estimation. We performed experiments with a multimodal phantom for determining mechanical properties with the dynamic imaging system. The DIS estimated size and depth with errors of 0.8% and 20.67% compared to the tactile imaging sensor measurement errors of 7.23% and 41.83%. The dynamic imaging system also determined elastic modulus and absorption coefficient of the embedded object with moderate errors.