Biomedical Impacts of LEDs

MARCIA STAMELL, ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR, marcia.stamell @photonics.com

Our cover story this month talks about advances to endoscopy brought about by the emergence of LEDs as the procedure’s preferred light source. LED systems reduce eyestrain and optimize contrast of the tissue morphology because they allow users to adjust the makeup of the light. But as Kavita Aswani, Tara Maggiano and James Clements of Excelitas explain, modern LED light sources also enable surgeons to both view the visible area of interest and gather additional information through the excitation of biomarkers. This change, they say, opens the way for better diagnosis, greater surgical precision and faster recovery times. “LED Technology Advances Endoscopy” (read article).

LED light is also a feature in a microscopy platform that enables high-speed imaging of tissue samples, which is the subject of an article by Cody Daniel of 3Scan. The system integrates a high-speed camera with an automated microtome coupled to an LED light source that transmits light through the bevel of the blade. It can generate as many as 50,000 section images in a few hours and be rendered into 3D. This capacity promises to yield more accurate diagnosis of tissue than is available through limited sampling and can open the way to answering complex research questions. “Histology Breaks a Speed Barrier” (read article).

Elsewhere in the magazine:

• Sophie Brasselet of Institut Fresnel writes about the use of a variant of coherent Raman scattering (CRS) to diagnose lipid loss at an early stage in neurological disorders. Polarized-resolved CRS can increase sensitivity to molecular organization to reveal deformation of the myelin membrane at the ~100 nm scale. It shows promise for the diagnosis and treatment of conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. “Polarization-Resolved CRS Reveals Lipid Disorder at the Molecular Scale” (read article).

• Science Writer Valerie Coffey reports on photonics that gleans ideas from the way organisms interact with light. These interactions are then translated into photonics technology and manmade systems. The potential uses of these bio-inspired photonics are varied — from tunable filters and microlenses to bio-optical sensors. “Bio-Inspired Photonics Comes Full Circle,” (read article).

• For our Biopinion, Laura Marcu of the University of California, Davis, calls for accelerating the adoption of fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) into clinical practice. The technique shows great promise for intraoperative real-time diagnostics during tumor removal, improving both surgical outcomes and patient quality of life. But adoption is hampered by the limited ability to validate endogenous fluorescence signals against gold standard techniques. “FLIM delineates tumor margins in real time” (read article).

• And in our special section, Matthias Schulze of Coherent Inc. writes about trends in biomedical lasers for therapeutics (read article).

Enjoy the issue.