I-Corps: Label-free optical imaging of the lymphatic system for anatomical pathology, image-guided surgery, and disease screening

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is that it can potentially improve the survival rate of cancer patients and increase work productivity of physicians from a number of specialties. This I-Corps project aims to explore the applications of a technology for anatomical pathology, intra-operative imaging, intra-operative diagnosis, and noninvasive cancer screening. The lymphatic system is extremely important to human health because it is responsible for immune functions. However, it has been traditionally difficult to visualize the lymphatic system because it is translucent and flows very slowly. This project explores opportunities for a technology that visualizes the lymphatic system without any dye or label. In anatomical pathology, pathologists can potentially use it to find more lymph nodes to evaluate cancer staging and help improve survival rates. In intra-operative imaging, cardiothoracic surgeons and plastic surgeons can potentially use it to find individual lymph nodes or lymphatic vessels faster and with higher accuracy. In non-invasive screening, physicians can potentially use it to evaluate the lymph node conditions of patients as a disease indicator.This I-Corps project is based on a cutting-edge optical imaging technique that exploits the natural contrast between the lymphatic system and the surrounding fat. It does not require an injection or preparation step. The imaging contrast is purely based on the contrast in chemical composition. In mice experiments, this technology can visualize almost all the superficial lymph nodes through the intact skin. When monitoring mouse lymph node responses to cancer and vaccines, immune responses as early as 9 hours after injection were observed. In human specimen pilot studies, human lymph nodes surrounded by fat were observed with extremely high contrast. This technology may be translated to use in anatomical pathology, intra-operative imaging, and noninvasive screening.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.