Abstract

Nonlinear optical microscopy offers a series of techniques that have the potential to be applied in vivo, for intraoperative identification of tumor border and in situ pathology. By addressing the different content of lipids that characterize the tumors with respect to the normal brain tissue, CARS microscopy enables to discern primary and secondary brain tumors from healthy tissue. A study performed in mouse models shows that the reduction of the CARS signal is a reliable quantity to identify brain tumors, irrespective from the tumor type. Moreover it enables to identify tumor borders and infiltrations at a cellular resolution. Integration of CARS with autogenous TPEF and SHG adds morphological and compositional details about the tissue. Examples of multimodal CARS imaging of different human tumor biopsies demonstrate the ability of the technique to retrieve information useful for histopathological diagnosis.

© 2013 SPIE