Label free imaging of blood smears and tissue biopsies

描述（由申请人提供）：该探索性项目旨在研究我们开发的新开发的光学干涉技术-空间光干涉显微镜（SLIM）-用于表征血液涂片和组织活检的潜力。SLIM是无标记的，对疾病发展给生物样本带来的折射率变化非常敏感。如果成功的话，从长远来看，即5-10年的时间，我们预计这种无标记的生物样本成像方法将提供更快的临床相关数据，因为它绕过了大部分组织学制备过程，例如染色。此外，由于其对组织结构变化的敏感性，SLIM将提供比普通组织学更丰富的信息，这将有助于病理学家更快，更准确地诊断。探索阶段项目将有以下具体目标：开发先进的高通量仪器，对血液涂片进行原理验证研究，重点关注几种特定疾病，并对正常和三种类型的癌症（乳腺癌，前列腺癌和肺癌）进行图像活检。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This exploratory project is aimed at investigating the potential of newly developed optical interferometric technique that we developed- Spatial Light Interference Microscopy (SLIM)-- for characterizing blood smears and tissue biopsies. SLIM is label-free and uniquely sensitive to refractive index modifications brought to the biospecimen by disease development . If successful, in the long-run, i.e. 5-10 years period, we anticipate that this label-free approach to imaging biospecimens will provide faster access to clinically-relevant data, as it bypasses most of the histology preparation process, e.g. staining. Further, due to its exquisite sensitivity to structural changes in the tissue, SLIM will provide a greater wealth of information than common histology, which should aid the pathologist in reaching a faster, more accurate diagnosis. The exploratory stage project will have the following specific aims: develop advanced, high-throughput instrumentation, perform proof-of principle studies on blood smears with focus on several specific diseases, and image biopsies of normal and three types of cancers (breast, prostate, and lung).