New Imaging Technique Offers Hope for Real-Time Histology

Researchers have used a novel microscope-based imaging technique to differentiate between cancer cells and normal cells in living tissue without the need for time-consuming histological procedures.

Investigators at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, USA) used lipid and protein specific microscopic probes in conjunction with a novel technique called nonlinear interferometric vibrational imaging (NIVI).

The probes were used to label lipid-rich normal cells and protein-rich cancer cells within living rat tissues. By combining two different light sources, the microscope produced colored images that defined normal and cancerous areas within the tissue.

Results published in the November 23, 2010, online edition of the journal Cancer Research revealed that the technique was able to provide easy-to-read, color-coded images of the tissue, with more than 99% confidence, in less than five minutes. Particularly impressive was the technique's ability to outline tumor boundaries clearly.

"Sometimes it is very hard to tell visually whether a cell is normal or abnormal,” said senior author Dr. Stephen A. Boppart, professor of bioengineering and medicine at the University of Illinois. "But molecularly, there are fairly clear signatures.”

"The diagnosis is made based on very subjective interpretation - how the cells are laid out, the structure, the morphology,” said Dr. Boppart. "This is what we call the gold standard for diagnosis. We want to make the process of medical diagnostics more quantitative and more rapid. As we get better spectral resolution and broader spectral range, we can have more flexibility in identifying different molecules. Once you get to that point, we think it will have many different applications for cancer diagnostics, for optical biopsies, and other types of diagnostics.”

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