Primary Angiosarcoma of Breast: a Case Series of Rare Disease.

Primary angiosarcoma of breast (PAB) is a very rare disease and it accounts for only 0.05% of all malignant breast tumors. We present the clinical radiological and pathological features, treatment given, and outcome of this rare disease in our institute in a period of 5 years, aiming at contributing to the knowledge of prognostic factors of this rare disease. We report a case of PAB treated at our hospital along with 2 more cases of PAB we found on retrospective analysis. The basic criterion for inclusion in the study was the presence of histopathologically confirmed primary angiosarcoma of the breast: graded into low (G1, G2) and high (G3) grades. Surgeons must be aware about its high systemic metastatic potential, atypical presentation, and diffuse nature of infiltration so that it will be diagnosed early, and undergo a margin negative excision with reconstruction after a proper metastatic evaluation.

Quantifying the influence of Bessel beams on image quality in optical coherence tomography.

Light scattered by turbid tissue is known to degrade optical coherence tomography (OCT) image contrast progressively with depth. Bessel beams have been proposed as an alternative to Gaussian beams to image deeper into turbid tissue. However, studies of turbid tissue comparing the image quality for different beam types are lacking. We present such a study, using numerically simulated beams and experimental OCT images formed by Bessel or Gaussian beams illuminating phantoms with optical properties spanning a range typical of soft tissue. We demonstrate that, for a given scattering parameter, the higher the scattering anisotropy the lower the OCT contrast, regardless of the beam type. When focusing both beams at the same depth in the sample, we show that, at focus and for equal input power and resolution, imaging with the Gaussian beam suffers less reduction of contrast. This suggests that, whilst Bessel beams offer extended depth of field in a single depth scan, for low numerical aperture (NA < 0.1) and typical soft tissue properties (scattering coefficient, µs = 3.7 mm(-1) and high scattering anisotropy, g > 0.95), superior contrast (by up to ~40%) may be obtained over an extended depth range by a Gaussian beam combined with dynamic focusing.