Researchers led by Prof. Dr. Vasilis Ntziachristos, holder of the Chair of Biological Imaging at the Faculty of Medicine, Technical University of Munich, and from the Center for Translational Cancer Research (TranslaTUM) at the Technical University of Munich have developed the so-called "Mid-Infrared Optoacoustic Microscopy" (MiROM). This method excites the molecules to be examined with laser light in the mid-infrared range, which generates then molecule-specific molecular vibrations.

The molecules selectively absorb certain wavelengths, which leads to a thermo-elastic expansion - tiny volumetric expansions of the molecules - which in turn generate ultrasonic waves. These ultrasonic waves can be detected and processed in such a way that the distribution of the respective molecules can be visualized.

The method was described in Nature Biotechnology:
Miguel A. Pleitez, Asrar Ali Khan, Alice Soldà, Andriy Chmyrov, Josefine Reber, Francesca Gasparin, Markus R. Seeger, Benedikt Schätz, Stephan Herzig, Marcel Scheideler & Vasilis Ntziachristos (2019). Label-free metabolic imaging by mid-infrared optoacoustic microscopy in living cells. Nature Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0359-9

Source:
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