High Speed Microscope

US engineers have successfully created a new optical microscope capable of accomplishing "difficult to swallow" tasks such as distinguishing and localizing rare cells in a forest of different types of cells to detect the risk. muscle cancer.

Normally, only a few dozen of the healthy cells are benign, but this minority is a precursor of metastases, the spread of cancer cells causes about 90% of deaths. due to cancer.

Unfortunately, finding these cells is extremely difficult. Currently, microscopes equipped with digital cameras are the "gold standard" in the field of cellular analysis, but they are 'critically' not fast enough to detect potentially cancerous cells. .

"In order to capture those cells, the camera must be capable of capturing and processing millions of images continuously at high frame rates ," said Bahram Jalali of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

To overcome these limitations, UCLA's experts have developed an optical microscope system capable of detecting rare cells with impressive sensitivity, filtering out one cell of a million cells. plankton

This system, called a steam flux analyzer, contains a microchannel conduit device, a camera and an image processor.

New cell scan technology can handle 100,000 cells per second, up to 100 times faster than current image analyzers, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.