Optical Engineers Go to New Wavelengths to Expose Cancer
Can’t find something in the dark? Shine a light. But that’s not so easy when the “dark” is the human body, and what you’re looking for is cancer.
Such a “light” may not be so far-fetched. Thanks to a $2 million National Cancer Institute grant to build and test an advanced dual-functioning medical instrument called the Bi-FOV Endoscope, Rice researchers may be on the verge of making noninvasive cancer screening a bedside reality. “We believe that the low-cost endoscope with its enhanced FOV, or field-of-view, capabilities will quickly become an important imaging and monitoring tool,” said Tomasz Tkaczyk, assistant professor in bioengineering and principal investigator on the grant.
Through a long-term collaborative effort that began in 2001 to develop multimodal miniature microscopes (4Ms), a team of researchers at Rice, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Arizona are taking the 4M technology from bench to bedside by building a new imaging system that scans wide areas of tissue noninvasively while detecting the cellular and molecular characteristics of the disease in both low- and high-spatial resolution.
More than 85 percent of cancers arise in epithelial tissue, so this area of research has become an important battleground for researchers.
“The epithelium is a primary body tissue made up of one or more layers of closely packed cells that have almost no intercellular spaces,” said Tkaczyk. “One of the greatest challenges in optical engineering and physics is to navigate a 300-micron-thick layer of tissue while clearly distinguishing between both wide-field and molecular fields of view.”
For example, at low magnification, the dual-imaging endoscope will show an area of several square
centimeters to identify suspicious lesions. Then a high-resolution component will provide 3-D optical cross-sectioning capability to expose abnormal subcellular and molecular features within various levels of tissue. The larger picture can be illuminated by molecular contrast agents that bind safely to biomarkers to reveal the cellular architecture and organization. These contrasting agents are under development in the Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging Laboratory of Rice’s Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the Stanley C. Moore Professor, department chair for bioengineering, professor of electrical and computer engineering and a co-principal investigator for the project.
“Due to its compact size and capability of producing high-resolution images, the Bi-FOV has tremendous potential for point-of-care diagnostics — especially in developing countries or remote regions of the world,” said Richards-Kortum, who also is director of the new global health initiative Rice 360°: Technology Solutions for World Health.
Ann Gillenwater, associate professor and associate surgeon in the Department of Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, will lead a group that will help test the new endoscope in clinical trials and move the technology into common use.
“There is a tremendous need for novel technologies that can detect precancerous lesions without tissue removal,” Gillenwater said. “Optical imaging systems are inexpensive and are coming to play a critical role in all aspects of cancer detection and treatment.”
The five-year, multidisciplinary project will involve several institutions and three subcontractors: HT Micro, Braggone and Black Forest Engineering.