Histopathology for Mohs Micrographic Surgery with Photoacoustic Remote Sensing Microscopy

TL;DR

This paper introduces a non-contact, label-free microscopy technique using photoacoustic remote sensing (PARS) to visualize unprocessed tissue in Mohs surgery, potentially speeding up intraoperative diagnosis.

Contribution

It presents the first direct comparison between PARS microscopy and traditional histopathology in human tissues, demonstrating high-resolution, large-area imaging capabilities.

Findings

PARS can visualize entire MMS sections over 1 cm².

PARS provides subcellular resolution (~300 nm).

PARS offers a rapid, label-free alternative to frozen sectioning.

Abstract

Mohs micrographic surgery (MMS) is a precise oncological technique where layers of tissue are resected and examined with intraoperative histopathology to minimize the removal of normal tissue while completely excising the cancer. To achieve intraoperative pathology, the tissue is frozen, sectioned and stained over a 20- to 60-minute period, then analyzed by the MMS surgeon. Surgery is continued one layer at a time until no cancerous cells remain, meaning MMS can take several hours to complete. Ideally, it would be desirable to circumvent or augment frozen sectioning methods and directly visualize subcellular morphology on the unprocessed excised tissues. Employing photoacoustic remote sensing (PARS) microscopy, we present a non-contact label-free reflection-mode method of performing such visualizations in frozen sections of human skin. PARS leverages endogenous optical absorption contrast within cell nuclei to provide visualizations reminiscent of histochemical staining techniques. Presented here, is the first true one to one comparison between PARS microscopy and standard histopathological imaging in human tissues. We demonstrate the ability of PARS microscopy to provide large grossing scans (>1 cm2, sufficient to visualize entire MMS sections) and regional scans with subcellular lateral resolution (~300 nm).