Development of a multimodal microscope for enhanced clinical diagnoses

在过去的二十年里，在生物学和医学中出现了各种各样的光学成像方式，用于在建筑(例如光学层析技术)、细胞(例如共焦显微镜)或分子(例如光谱学)的水平上观察组织。共聚焦显微镜与荧光染料、纳米粒子和量子点结合使用，可以解释许多基本的生物学途径。然而，在临床世界中，光学成像仅限于自然对比剂机制，因为很少有造影剂被批准用于人类。尽管有这个限制，共焦内窥镜已经取得了巨大的进步，可以在体内对结肠、宫颈和声带等内部器官进行细胞可视化。通过将反射技术与来自弹性蛋白和胶原等分子的改变信号相结合，可以获得额外的对比度，这些分子在人体组织中自然含量丰富。

The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of a wide array of optical imaging modalities used in biology and medicine for observing tissues at the architectural (e.g. optical tomography techniques), cellular (e.g. confocal microscopy) or molecular (e.g. spectroscopy) levels. Confocal microscopy used in conjunction with fluorescent dyes, nano-particles and quantum dots has permitted the elucidation of many fundamental biological pathways. However in the clinical world, optical imaging is limited to natural contrast mechanisms as very few contrast agents are approved for use in human. Despite this constraint, confocal endoscopy has already made tremendous progress allowing in vivo cellular visualization of internal organs such as the colon, cervix and vocal folds. Additional contrast could be achieved by combining reflectance techniques with altered signals coming from molecules such as elastin and collagen, which are naturally abundant in human tissues.