Technology Developed for Mapping Blood Vessels May Aid Cancer Research

Similar to healthy tissue, tumors flourish on nutrients carried to them by the blood stream. The fast growth of new blood vessels is a key characteristic of cancer, and new research has demonstrated that suppressing blood vessel growth can also keep tumors from growing. To determine better the relationship between cancer and the vascular system, scientists are making detailed maps of the entire network of blood vessels in organs.

Regrettably, the current mapping process is time-consuming: using traditional methods, mapping a 1-cm block of tissue can take months. In a paper published in the October 2011 issue of the Optical Society’s (OSA) open-access journal Biomedical Optics Express, computational neuroscientists from Texas A&M University (College Station, USA), along with collaborators at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign, USA) and Kettering University (Flint, MI, USA), described a new system, evaluated in mouse brain samples, that considerably reduces that time.

The technology employs a technique called knife-edge scanning microscopy (KESM). First, blood vessels are filled with ink, and the whole brain sample is embedded in plastic. Next, the plastic block is placed onto an automated vertically moving stage. A diamond knife shaves a very thin slice -one micrometer or less--off the top of the block, imaging the sample line by line at the tip of the knife. Each tiny movement of the stage triggers the camera to take a picture. In this way, the researchers can get the full 3D structure of the mouse brain’s vascular network--from arteries and veins down to the smallest capillaries--in less than two days at full production speed. In the future, the investigators plan to augment the process with fluorescence imaging, which will allow researchers to tie brain structure to function.

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Texas A&M University
University of Illinois
Kettering University