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\mum resolution in 3D with a typical 200\mum imaging depth. A 1cm2 specimen is
scanned at a single depth and processed in about 5 minutes. This rapid imaging
process is non-invasive and 30 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 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 intra-operative neurosurgical clinical setting to assess
tumorous glial and epileptic margins