Talk:General Biology/Cells/Cell Structure

TIVI Finding Cancer Cells Faster
Researchers at the University of Illinois have used a new microscopy technique, termed nonlinear interferometric vibrational imaging (NIVI), and produced color coded images of tissue, showing clear tumor boundaries, with more than 99% confidence in less than five minutes.

Current diagnostic methods require a day or more to show biopsy results, and are based on visual interpretations of cell structure. NIVI can assist in making diagnostics faster and more quantitative. Instead of focusing on cell structure and tissue structure, NIVI constructs images based on molecular composition, which is much clearer than the current visual method used by pathologists. Cancer cells produce more protein, a useful fact that NIVI uses to identify cancer cells, without relying on the staining method used currently. Another advantage of NIVI is that it shows a better mapping of tumor boundaries, the uncertain boundary zone of NIVI being only 100 microns.

Since each type of molecule has its own unique vibrational energy, enhancing the resonance of that vibration is used by NIVI to identify cells with high concentrations of that molecule. Two beams of light are used to excite molecules in a tissue sample. One beam serves as a reference, so that background noise can be cancelled and the molecular signal can be isolated. The resulting spectrum produces a color coded image for the tissue (for example, blue for normal cells, red for cancer cells).

Further improvements to NIVI are being worked on. Other light sources (different lasers) may make NIVI portable. The research is sponsored by The National Cancer Institute.

References

P. D. Chowdary, Z. Jiang, E. J. Chaney, W. A. Benalcazar, D. L. Marks, M. Gruebele, S. A. Boppart. Molecular Histopathology by Spectrally Reconstructed Nonlinear Interferometric Vibrational Imaging. Cancer Research, 2010; DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-1554

Not to be rude, but what does this have to to do with general biology for high school students? Svrangerchrista (discuss • contribs) 21:11, 23 April 2017 (UTC)