It has also been shown that exogenous dyes exhibit selective uptake in neoplastic lesions and may offer the best contrast for optical imaging. Use of exogenous agents would provide fluorescent markers which could serve to detect embedded tumors in the breast. In particular, the ability to monitor the fluorescent yield and lifetime may also enable biochemical specificity if the fluorophore is sensitive to a specific metabolite, such as oxygen, glucose, etc. Consequently, this NCI supported project is aimed at combining the best aspects of both endogenous optical imaging and exogenous fluorescent lifetime and yield imaging. This may provide the best sensitivity and specificity for diagnosis with optical techniques.
Diseases involving the skin and underlying soft tissues are legion.
These tissues are involved by a wide range of congenital, inflammatory, infectious, traumatic, and neoplastic processes. Aside from physical examination, the diagnosis of most of these lesions is invasive, time-consuming, and costly, often requiring surgical excision or biopsy followed by pathological investigations. A non-invasive, efficient, low cost technique of evaluating skin and soft tissue cellular changes would be extremely valuable in the management of numerous conditions. Thus, enlarged nuclei are primary cellular indicators of cancer, dysplasia and cell regeneration in most human tissues. Current methods such as image analysis and flow cytometry used to size nuclei in tissue require dispersed cellular samples in liquid media or tissue sections which cannot be used for in vivo analysis of cells.