I-Corps: Video-rate structured illumination microscopy for point-of-care prostate biopsy diagnosis

I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力围绕着降低社会医疗保健成本和提高疾病诊断质量的需要。不幸的是，对于许多需要癌症和其他疾病评估诊断程序的患者来说，初步测试并不能及时显示准确的结果。对于前列腺癌、乳腺癌和非肿瘤性肾脏和肝脏疾病等癌症来说，这是一个特别的问题，在这些疾病中，新鲜组织成像是评估过程的重要组成部分。新鲜组织评估的局限性最终导致患者不必要的重复程序，因为目前的方案涉及组织破坏和长时间的处理时间来显示诊断。更快、更准确的临床成像技术可以通过减少不必要的重复诊断程序，潜在地降低总体医疗保健成本和许多侵入性程序的负担。此外，从数据收集和存储的角度来看，快速临床成像技术可以提供更简单的方法，从而降低个性化医疗的成本。考虑到快速成像技术在医疗保健之外的广泛应用，新技术可以改善工业材料筛选，并为产品的精确测量提供有效的解决方案。I-Corps项目旨在进一步开发一种快速成像技术，用于医疗保健或其他行业的商业化。该技术代表了结构照明显微镜（SIM）的一种新应用，它利用图案光和数学算法来消除所产生图像中的失焦区域。使用SIM成像可生成荧光物体的高分辨率图像，如生物组织中的细胞、无机化学品或法医学中的纤维。SIM系统能够用各种快速作用的染色剂成像相对较大的区域，代表了荧光显微镜领域的速度突破。SIM的速度优势激发了初步的研究，集中在癌症评估的程序点新鲜组织成像上。评估前列腺和肾脏活检组织的初步临床研究表明，SIM是识别癌症的准确工具。重要的是，用SIM可以捕获经过最少处理的新鲜组织，在组织去除后几分钟内产生与病理相关的数字图像。SIM用于癌症诊断的进一步验证已在更大的标本上进行，包括手术切除的前列腺和部分肾脏。虽然初步数据显示了在程序点癌症评估方面的潜力，但I-Corps项目还将探索在化学和法医学等其他行业的应用。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project revolves around the need to reduce societal healthcare costs and to improve the quality of disease diagnostics. Unfortunately for many patients needing diagnostic procedures for cancer and other disease evaluation, preliminary testing does not reveal accurate results in a timely manner. This is a particular problem for cancers such as prostate and breast and non-oncologic diseases of the kidney and liver where imaging fresh tissue is an important component of the evaluation process. Limitations of fresh tissue evaluation ultimately result in unnecessary repeat procedures for patients because current protocols involve tissue destruction and long processing times to reveal a diagnosis. Faster, more accurate clinical imaging techniques can potentially decrease overall healthcare costs and the burden of many invasive procedures by reducing unnecessary repeat diagnostic procedures. Furthermore, rapid clinical imaging techniques can lessen the cost of personalized medicine by offering a more simplistic approach from a data collection and storage standpoint. Considering expanded applications of rapid imaging technology outside of healthcare, novel techniques can improve industrial screening of materials and offer efficient solutions for precision measurement of products.This I-Corps project aims to further develop a rapid imaging technique for commercialization in healthcare or other industry. The technology represents a novel application of structured illumination microscopy (SIM), which utilizes patterned light and a mathematical algorithm to eliminate out of focus areas in the resulting images. Imaging with SIM produces high-resolution images of fluorescent objects such as cells in biological tissue, inorganic chemicals, or fibers in forensics. The SIM system is able to image a relatively large area with a variety of fast-acting stains, representing a speed breakthrough in the field of fluorescence microscopy. The speed advantage of SIM inspired preliminary research focused on point-of-procedure fresh tissue imaging for cancer evaluation. Pilot clinical studies evaluating prostate and kidney biopsy tissue have demonstrated that SIM is an accurate tool for identifying cancer. Importantly, fresh tissue with minimal processing can be captured with SIM to produce pathology-relevant digital images within minutes of tissue removal. Further validation of SIM for cancer diagnostics has been conducted on larger specimens including surgically removed prostates and partial kidneys. While preliminary data has shown the potential for point-of-procedure cancer evaluation, this I-Corps project will also explore applications in other industries such as chemistry and forensics.