American scientists have developed a new method of fluorescent bioimaging, which allows real-time observation of processes in the body, detection of disease centers and control of treatment effectiveness. A description of this method is given in the journal Nature Communications.
The fluorescence bioimaging method is already successfully used for molecular imaging at the laboratory and clinical level, in particular for monitoring oncological operations on the lungs and monitoring patients before, during and after operations.
In traditional fluorescent bioimaging, a fluorescent agent is injected into tissue or blood, which binds to specific cells or proteins, and when exposed to light of a certain spectrum, these cells become visible. However, this method requires complex calculations for data processing and image construction.
Scientists from the University of Southern California and the University of Cambridge presented a new version of the method known as the Spectrally Encoded Enhanced Representation (SEER) method. This method allows not only to observe molecules, but also to distinguish their colors over the entire spectrum and create full-color images of internal organs.
SEER offers a significant advantage in the form of 2.7 times greater image clarity and performance, 67 times faster, achieved by a special algorithm for processing fluorescent label signals. This approach also requires less computer memory resources, which is important in large-scale research.
It is planned to use the SEER method for the clinical detection of early stages of lung cancer and to study the impact of pollutants on the body.
