Bioinspired Imaging Sensor Advances FGS

There is a high risk of cancer recurrence if even a small number of cancerous cells are left behind after surgical resection. To prevent this, researchers have developed fluorescence-guided surgery (FGS). In FGS, patients are injected with a fluorescent probe that preferentially binds to tumor cells, enabling surgeons to easily identify lesions with the help of specialized endoscopes that emit the necessary excitation light. A team has now reported a novel endoscopic imaging system whose design could greatly accelerate the adoption of multitracer FGS.

At the heart of this design lies an innovative hexachromatic bioinspired imaging sensor (BIS), which the researchers modeled based on the visual system of the mantis shrimp. The sensor consists of three layers of vertically stacked photodetectors covered with a checkerboard-like arrangement of two different filters; one filters visible light and the other filters near-infrared (NIR) light.

The result is a single-chip camera that can effectively capture light on six different spectral channels, thereby making it capable of detecting even the most subtle differences in fluorescence emission from the tissue being imaged. To put its performance into perspective, this BIS can differentiate fluorescent tracers with emission peaks that are just 20 nm apart. This differentiation is not possible with current clinically approved imaging instruments. (Image credit: Credit: George et al., doi 10.1117/1.JBO.28.5.056002)

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