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posted by martyb on Friday March 24 2017, @06:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the of-mice-and-men dept.

With just an inexpensive micro-thin surgical needle and laser light, University of Utah [U. of U.] engineers have discovered a minimally invasive, inexpensive way to take high-resolution pictures of an animal brain, a process that also could lead to a much less invasive method for humans.

A team led by University of Utah electrical and computer engineering associate professor Rajesh Menon has now proven the process works on mice for the benefit of medical researchers studying neurological disorders such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and aggression.

[...] The process, called "computational cannula microscopy," involves taking a needle about a quarter-millimeter in diameter and inserting it into the brain. Laser light shines through the needle and into the brain, illuminating certain cells "like a flashlight," Menon says. In the case of mice, researchers genetically modify the animals so that only the cells they want to see glow under this laser light.

The light from the glowing cells then is captured by the needle and recorded by a standard camera. The captured light is run through a sophisticated algorithm developed by Menon and his team, which assembles the scattered light waves into a 2D or potentially, even a 3D picture.

[...] "Although its[sic] much more complex from a regulatory standpoint, it can be done in humans, and not just in the brain, but for other organs as well," he says. "But our motivation for this project right now is to look inside the brain of the mouse and further develop the technique to understand fundamental neuroscience in the mouse brain."

Journal Reference:
Ganghun Kim, Naveen Nagarajan, Elissa Pastuzyn, Kyle Jenks, Mario Capecchi, Jason Shepherd, Rajesh Menon. Deep-brain imaging via epi-fluorescence Computational Cannula Microscopy. Scientific Reports, 2017; 7: 44791 DOI: 10.1038/srep44791

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 24 2017, @01:10PM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday March 24 2017, @01:10PM (#483618) Journal

    Didn't see any mention of where the needle goes. I'm guessing they can't just go through the skull. I can imagine that a very, very, very small probe could get through a hard substance, but I strongly suspect their microscopic needle is nowhere close to small enough to pass through bone.

    Also, does the needle flex? If you have to go around the skill, the needle has to be able to curve to reach everywhere in the brain.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @09:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @09:07PM (#483868)

    If you must know, the brain is removed from the animal. They probably use a little guillotine [kentscientific.com] to chop the head off then come in from the neck hole using rongeurs [kentscientific.com] to crack the skull off piece by piece. Also, these mice were genetically modified to have genes for fluorescent proteins that would glow under the laser:

    Postnatal day 3 mouse pups from Hoxb8IRES-Cre/+; CX3CR1GFP/+; Rosa26CAG-LSL-tdTomato/+ mice were carefully dissected following isoflurane anesthesia. Brain tissues were kept in 1X phosphate buffered saline solution (PBS) and subsequently used for imaging.

    http://www.nature.com/articles/srep44791 [nature.com]

    This is BS:

    a process that also could lead to a much less invasive method for human