Human breast cancer sample in situ: proteins (green), DNA (magenta), and fat (yellow) PURDUE UNIVERSITY, CHIEN-SHENG LIAOA type of imaging that can capture the activity of proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and other molecules in some living tissues without the need for fluorescent labels has been in the works in the last decade. But while this technique, called in vivo vibrational spectroscopic imaging, can be used to visualize tissues without the need for fluorescent labels, it has still been too slow to be practical for most research and clinical applications.
Now, researchers at Purdue University in Indiana have made two major improvements to the approach, making it fast enough to be used in real-time and allowing imaging of not just transparent but also thicker, turbid living tissues. The results are published today (October 30) in Science Advances.
“This is a very innovative approach,” said Wei Min of the department of chemistry at Columbia University in New York City who was not involved in the study. “And the instrumentation the authors built is quite impressive.”
“This is good progress toward making this technique more practical,” said bioengineering professor Stephen Boppart, who develops novel imaging modalities at the University of Illinois and was not involved in the work. “The authors have made the acquisition faster, allowing image ...
