Photoacoustic Microscopy Draws a Bead on Cancer

U.S. researchers have proposed an approach using another up-and-coming technique, photoacoustic microscopy (PAM), that could help cancer surgeons assess tumor tissue in the operating room rather than the biopsy lab, and thereby avoid the need for repeat surgeries to get at cancerous tissue missed the first time around. In a study of human breast cancer, the research team found that PAM could provide “multilayered histology-like imaging” of cancer tissues, comparable in key diagnostic features to the gold-standard images that currently come from biopsies—but in far less time.

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