
410 Handbook of Biomedical Optics
showed signicant dierence in blood volume between benign
and malignant lesions.
e general conclusions of these optical mammography stud-
ies can be summarized as follows: all teams report detection rates
of 80%–85% for cancerous lesions when optical imaging is used
as a stand-alone modality. e contrast of tumors originates
mainly from their increased vascularization, and sometimes
lowered oxygen saturation, though hypoxia appears to be a poor
discriminator in general. Similar detection rates are reported for
cysts, which oer a strong scattering contrast. On the other hand,
broadenomas are much more ...