White sugar instead of contrast agent medical imaging technology is becoming more mature

The researchers say that the tumor tissue has a higher demand for sugar than the surrounding normal tissue. The more malignant the tumor, the higher the demand for sugar. Therefore, it is possible to use white sugar instead of the contrast agent to determine whether a tumor exists in a human body, and a tumor state. This will not only reduce costs, reduce the economic burden of patients, but also play a positive role in the patient's psychology.

The study used three brain tumor patients and four normal subjects as subjects, and the researchers said that more clinical trials will be conducted in the future. However, at present, the method of using white sugar instead of contrast agent cannot be applied to diabetics.

The most promising new tomography technology in recent years is optical coherence tomography, or OCT for short. In particular, it has attractive application prospects in biological tissue detection and imaging. It has been tried in clinical diagnosis of ophthalmology, dentistry and dermatology. It is another major technological breakthrough after X-CT and MRI technology. Has been rapidly developed. It utilizes the basic principle of the weak coherent optical interferometer to detect the back reflection or several scattered signals of the different depth layers of the biological tissue facing the incident weak coherent light. By scanning, the two-dimensional or three-dimensional structure images of the biological tissue can be obtained.

The optical path difference between the ballistic photon and the meandering photon and the reference light returned from the scattering medium interferes within the coherence length of the light source. The optical path difference between the diffused photon and the reference light is greater than the coherence length of the light source, and no interference can occur. In this way, the ballistic photons and the meandering photons with the information of the sample to be tested can be extracted and imaged. It can achieve high-resolution non-invasive tomographic measurement of biological tissues and has broad application prospects. Optical coherence tomography has evolved from optical coherence domain reflectometry. In 1991, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology first reported optical coherence tomography in Science. This technique was then used to measure the optical properties of biological tissues and achieved good results. In 1996, the ophthalmic OCT system was put into the market for clinical medical devices. Since the advent of OCT technology, various research institutes have carried out a lot of research work to expand their application range and improve their performance. Many new methods have emerged, laying a foundation for the wide application of OCT technology in the medical field.

With the advancement of science, today's medical imaging technology has played an important role in medical diagnosis. Various detection methods and display methods tend to be more precise, more intuitive and more perfect, which helps people to observe biological tissues and understand material structure. Its development is the result of a combination of multiple disciplines such as physics, mathematics, electronics, computer science, and biomedicine.

From the invention of the microscope to the medical application of X-rays, people observed the morphological structure that the naked eye could not directly see in the form of images, which promoted the development of medical diagnosis. At present, various medical imaging technologies are continuously developed for research in the field of biomedicine. Different imaging principles can be used to observe different organ tissues, not only to give the shape of tissues, but also to identify and detect tissue features.

OCT technology has advantages such as non-contact and non-destructive, extremely high detection sensitivity and noise suppression capability, high-resolution non-invasive and in-vivo detection without radiation, and low cost and simple structure. Non-destructive testing in the fields of materials science and biomedicine has important application value and broad development prospects.

The original purpose of the OCT study was biomedical tomography, which is still dominant in medical applications. With the development of technology, in addition to applications in the medical field, OCT technology is advancing to other fields. Especially in the field of industrial measurement, such as displacement sensors, thickness measurement of thin films, and other measurements of objects that can be converted into displacement.

Recently, low coherence technology has emerged as a key technology for high density data storage. OCT technology can also be used to measure the residual porosity, fiber construction and structural integrity of highly scattering polymer molecules. It can also be used in the measurement of material coating. The researchers have used OCT technology to detect the damage of the composite material and test the ceramic material, which expands the application range of OCT technology. Others have studied the use of OCT in high-density data storage to achieve multilayer optical storage and high detection sensitivity.