The most common optical method to validate intracellular gene delivery in cancer is to detect tagged fluorescence signals from the cells. However, fluorescent detection is usually performed in vitro due to the limitation of standard microscopes. Herein, we propose a highly sensitive dual-modality fiber-optic imager (DFOI), which enables in vivo fluorescence imaging. Our system uses a coherent fiber bundle based imager capable of simultaneously performing both confocal reflectance and fluorescent microscopy. Non-viral vectors targeting human cervical cancer cells (HeLa) were used to evaluate the performance. Preliminary results demonstrated the DFOI is promising for in vivo evaluation of intracellular gene delivery.

Date Published: 20 March 2013
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 8576, Optical Fibers and Sensors for Medical Diagnostics and Treatment Applications XIII, 857604 (20 March 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2001636

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8576:
Optical Fibers and Sensors for Medical Diagnostics and Treatment Applications XIII
Israel Gannot, Editor(s)