  The progression of cancer is associated with different genetic and epigenetic
events which result in nano to microscale structural alterations in
cells/tissue. However, these structural alterations in the early stage of the
disease remain undetectable by conventional microscopy due to the
diffraction-limited resolution of ~200nm. With cancer being an epidemic
worldwide, early and accurate detection methods are always in demand. In this
sense, we developed a finer focusing mesoscopic physics-based partial wave
spectroscopy (PWS) imaging and quantification technique, which can probe the
precise scattering volume in cells/tissue to detect such structural
alterations. Therefore, we employ the highly sensitive PWS technique to
quantify the nanoscale refractive index fluctuations using commercially
available paraffin embedded tissue microarrays (TMA) samples with the goal of
the standardized early and accurate detection of stages of different cancers.
Recently the use of scientific TMA samples has gained research interest in
diagnosing different diseases and drug-effect in treatment since they are
commercially easily accessible. In this work, deadly cancer such as pancreatic,
prostate, breast, and colon cancer TMAs containing multiple cores of different
stages for each cancer are analyzed using the PWS technique and the degree of
disorder strength Ld was quantified. The finer focusing PWS results show that
an increase in the disorder strength with the increase in the stage of each
cancer. This quantitative analysis of different cancer stages using
commercially available TMA samples could enhance and standardize early,
accurate cancer diagnosis modalities.
