This paper presents ex-vivo investigation of the brain tumors, namely glioblastoma and anaplastic astrocytoma, by macroscopic fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) of endogenous metabolic cofactor nicotine amide dinucleotide (phosphate), NAD(P)H. The results of the study on the rat models indicate that the metabolism in brain tumors differs between tumor types and differs from normal brain tissue. It was also found that the brain tumors have specific optical metabolic signatures that differ them from most solid tumors, underling the complexity of glioma metabolism. The approach used in the experiments shows prospects to determine the surgical margins of gliomas and to investigate metabolic heterogeneity of the tumors on a macroscale. However, one has to be careful in the interpretation of the data obtained by FLIM.

Date Published: 22 February 2019
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 10882, Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences XIX, 1088209 (22 February 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2511475

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10882:
Multiphoton Microscopy in the Biomedical Sciences XIX
Ammasi Periasamy; Peter T. C. So; Karsten König, Editor(s)