Colon cancer is one of the most diffused cancers in the Western World, ranking third worldwide in frequency of incidence after lung and breast cancers. Even if it is curable when detected and treated early, a more accurate premature diagnosis would be a suitable aim for both cancer prognostic and treatment. Combined multimodal nonlinear optical (NLO) microscopies, such as two-photon excitation fluorescence (TPEF), second-harmonic generation (SHG), third harmonic generation (THG), and fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) can be used to detect morphological and metabolic changes associated with stroma and epithelial transformation in colon cancer disease. NLO microscopes provide complementary information about tissue microstructure, showing distinctive patterns between normal and malignant human colonic mucosa. Using a set of scoring methods significant differences both in the content, distribution and organization of stroma collagen fibrils, and lifetime components of NADH and FAD cofactors of human colon mucosa biopsies were found. Our results provide a framework for using NLO techniques as a clinical diagnostic tool for human colon cancer, and also suggest that the SHG and FLIM metrics could be applied to other intestinal disorders, which are characterized by abnormal cell proliferation and collagen assembly.

Date Published: 22 February 2013
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 8588, Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences XIII, 85881J (22 February 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2001708

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8588:
Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences XIII
Ammasi Periasamy; Karsten König; Peter T. C. So, Editor(s)