KNOWLEDGE / PIPELINE

Shining Light on Detection

BY LAURA BEIL

New optical imaging techniques may help find cancers that aren’t otherwise obvious

Researchers are moving closer to the day when they can peer into body tissues and see even the most hidden of tumors.

Perhaps nowhere is this technology more needed than with the detection of pancreatic cancer, which has one of the worst survival rates of any malignancy.

Recently, a team of scientists described a technique that might eventually allow doctors to look at a segment of the intestine adjacent to the pancreas and see —in a sense — faint wisps of cancer. The research is part a rapidly growing field of investigation: sensing or imaging tumors with light. While experiments encompass various approaches and strategies, the goal is the same: to enable doctors to easily probe tissue itself and find the footprints of cancer.

If this technique pans out, doctors might one day be able to pick up traces of tumors even before visible changes appear in the body. ...

[THIS STORY APPEARS IN FULL IN THE SPRING 2008 ISSUE OF HEAL]