Imaging of non-tumorous and tumorous human brain tissues with full-field optical coherence tomography
Abstract
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 cm(2) 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.
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BibTeX
@article{assayag2026imaging,
title = {{Imaging of non-tumorous and tumorous human brain tissues with full-field optical coherence tomography}},
author = {Osnath Assayag and Kate Grieve and Bertrand Devaux and Fabrice Harms and Johan Pallud and Fabrice Chretien and Claude Boccara and Pascale Varlet},
journal = {Neuroimage-Clinical},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1016/j.nicl.2013.04.005},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05797150v1},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Imaging of non-tumorous and tumorous human brain tissues with full-field optical coherence tomography
AU - Osnath Assayag
AU - Kate Grieve
AU - Bertrand Devaux
AU - Fabrice Harms
AU - Johan Pallud
AU - Fabrice Chretien
AU - Claude Boccara
AU - Pascale Varlet
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
JO - Neuroimage-Clinical
DO - 10.1016/j.nicl.2013.04.005
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05797150v1
AB - 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 cm(2) 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.
SN - 2213-1582
ER -