Asghar Maziar - Assistant Professor, Radiation Science department, School of allied medicine, Iran University of medical sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Daryoush Shahbazi-Gahrouei - Full Professor, Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
Mohammad Bagher Tavakoli - Full Professor, Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
Reza Reiazi - Assistant Professor ,Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, Iran University of medical sciences, Tehran, Iran

Introduction: An early diagnosis of breast cancer correlates directly on an accurate treatment plan and strategy. Early detection of breast cancer before its development would be a significant reduction of morbidity and mortality rates. Using hair samples to analysis the trace element concentrations is of interest among many researchers. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) are the most common methods in studying the structure and concentration of elements of tissues and also crystalline materials,using low energy X-ray. The aim of this study is to investigate application of X-ray diffraction & XRF analysis of hair in Detection of breast cancer Materials and Methods: Hair samples of 54 women (including 27 healthy and 27 patients) with average of 52.03 ± 11.44 years were analyzed. All the sample donors were Iranian women. For the measurements Wave Length X-ray Fluorescence (WLXRF) method was used. In this study, hair samples from 43 Iranian women (Age: 51.3 ± 11.5) had cut from occipital region of skull from healthy and also breast cancer patients women were analyzed using X-ray diffraction and the results were analyzed and were compared with mammography and pathology reports. Results: Trace elements in healthy individuals were higher than those in cancer patients. In addition, sensitivity of the used method (WLXRF) was 96% compared to mammography (77%) as a gold standard for breast cancer detection. Also The results showed a significant difference in height of 1st peak in WAXRD test of hair samples between healthy and patient group. In addition, sensitivity for purposed WAXRD method was 86% in comparison with synchrotron based XRD (64%) and mammography (70%). Conclusions: Trace elements in healthy individuals were higher than cancer patients and it seems that WLXRF may be used as a safe, low cost and reliable method with sensitivity higher than those of the other two relevant methods such as XRD and mammography. This study showed that the sensitivity of WideAngle X-ray diffraction (WAXRD) method on women hair samples of healthy and also breast cancer patients is comparable with mammography

Wave Length X-ray Fluorescence (WLXRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD) , breast tissue, human hair, non-invasive