Moreover, useful in vivo imaging may require several, preferably combined, and advanced imaging modalities to examine different but complementary characteristics of molecules, cells, or tissues

Moreover, useful in vivo imaging may require several, preferably combined, and advanced imaging modalities to examine different but complementary characteristics of molecules, cells, or tissues. operating room of the future, and major diseases such as malignancy and neurodegeneration are examined here, with emphasis on our own work and highlighting selected applications focusing on quantitation, early detection, treatment assessment, and clinical relevance, and more generally matching the quality of the optical detection approach to the complexity of the disease. This should provide guidance for future advanced theranostics, emphasizing a tighter couplingspatially and temporallybetween detection, diagnosis, and treatment, in the hope that technologic elegance such as that of a Mars rover can be translationally deployed in the medical center, for saving and improving lives. (altered from [4]). Improvements in medicine and surgery depend strongly on our understanding of the human bodys anatomy and physiology, and of its biological/molecular underpinnings. What we do with this knowledge and how useful we can make it in healing patients depends not only around the physicians and surgeons skills but also around the technologies available to them. There is no discipline that brings these two critical components of healthcare together better and with more promise than biomedical imaging. The field has experienced explosive growth recently, as anatomical imaging is usually supplemented with dynamic, high specificity methods providing access to molecular mechanisms of relevant processes (senescence, apoptosis, immune response, angiogenesis, metastasis). The most advanced imaging is usually no longer only topological in nature, as most currently established imaging methods, but also provides molecular specificity, usually by labeling with appropriate biomarkers. Even more excitingly, optical molecular imaging has the potential of additionally delivering mesoscopic capabilities (i.e., microscopic resolution in macroscopic body in vivo), thus performing a role previously reserved for the platinum standard in surgical decision-making, pathology. We proposed and implemented a multimode approach to biomedical optical imaging at all levels, featuring hyperspectral imaging, and optimized for earlier, more quantitative and reproducible detection of abnormalities, and tighter spatio-temporal coupling between such diagnosis and intervention. Addressing major areas of unmet need in the clinical realm with these new approaches could yield important improvements in disease management. While the emphasis is usually on concepts and technologies, application-wise our work on malignancy, stem cells, and neural processes (highlighting very early detection of Alzheimers Disease) will be reviewed, Scrambled 10Panx with emphasis on the new strategies needed to achieve the desired imaging performance, and their physics and engineering underpinnings. Thoughts about better ways for academia, the clinical, and the corporate world to work together for innovative biophotonic solutions and their use in addressing major diseases [4] will also be Scrambled 10Panx layed out. 2. Optical Microscopy and Its Applications the imaging modes chosen into an instrument that focuses them onto the same specimen, in real-time. Our new concept for such an instrument relies on the multimode microscopy we launched in the early nineties (observe below), but takes it in the direction of affordability, user-friendliness, and possibly ubiquity by retrofitting, while simultaneously addressing all imaging difficulties. 2.1. Confocal Microscopy Confocal microscopy was invented by Marvin Minsky [6] to peer through the haze of neural tissue under a microscope. It enhances the quality and axial resolution of microscopy by imposing spatial constraints around the photons reaching a detector, discriminating against contributions away from the plane of focus. Even though axial resolution improvement is only roughly two-fold, this was a major advance in 3D microscopic imaging, becoming commercially availablenot surprisinglyin the eighties, after the initial patent expired. Excellent studies and visualizations of biological tissue were and Scrambled 10Panx continue to be achieved using this method [7], and quantitation is also improved since the voxels probed are reduced in size Rabbit polyclonal to OSBPL6 (especially depth). Since it is mostly implemented as a point scanning method, with an intense laser source as excitation for the specimens fluorescence, the image acquisition speed is not very high, and photobleaching could constitute a problem [8]. With new fluorescent probes, better detection schemes and other improvements, such as spectral options, these issues have become less of a hindrance in carrying out outstanding research, including in live cells and tissues. We will spotlight here two new methods we developed, enabled and enhanced by the confocal capabilities. 2.1.1. Membrane Electrical Potentials We became interested in a new application for digital imaging.