Hopefully the technique will uncover diseased tissue where none has been detected through palpation. The study is funded by the National Institutes of Health. While fluorescence imaging won't replace X-rays and MRIs, it might fill niches that other technologies can't, Sevick says. X-rays are used primarily to look at bones, teeth and other dense tissue, while MRIs look at the structure, and to a limited extent the biochemistry, of soft tissue. The lifetime is the time it takes for these molecules to relax to a ground energy state, releasing fluorescent light in the process.
Lifetimes are typically a billionth or a trillionth of a second.
In the Applied Optics paper, Christina Hutchinson, a research associate in Sevick's lab, demonstrates how such lifetime measurements can be made in tissues. Because near-infrared light from a laser can penetrate through several inches of tissue, such as a breast, Paithankar has been able to adapt the technique to produce images. It's almost 'Star Trek'. On that TV show, the doctor has a device that emits some form of radiation, scans it over a patient and receives the signal coming back. That's not so far from reality.