理解疾病成因、识别早期疾病、靶向疾病治疗、预测治疗反应以及成功治疗疾病是现代生物医学的几项基本愿景。在过去的几年中,随着光学与光子学的发展,人们见证了光学与光子学具备迎接这些挑战的潜力。在这种情况下,如拉曼光谱等方法尤其值得关注。介绍了无损线性和非线性拉曼光谱方法在临床诊断中的应用。展现了一种基于芯片的细菌分离技术,用于快速识别病原并探测其对抗生素的抵抗力,这对病人的生存至关重要。并报告了这一技术如何应用于识别血液循环中的肿瘤细胞并同时监测其治疗药物。此外,还介绍了光谱方法在体外和体内的组织病理学中的应用,以对癌症进行早期诊断。

Cardiovascular diseases in general and atherothrombosis as the most common of its individual disease entities is the leading cause of death in the developed countries. Therefore, visualization and characterization of inner arterial plaque composition is of vital diagnostic interest, especially for the early recognition of vulnerable plaques. Established clinical techniques provide valuable morphological information but cannot deliver information about the chemical composition of individual plaques. Therefore, spectroscopic imaging techniques have recently drawn considerable attention. Based on the spectroscopic properties of the individual plaque components, as for instance different types of lipids, the composition of atherosclerotic plaques can be analyzed qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Here, we compare the feasibility of multimodal nonlinear imaging combining two-photon fluorescence (TPF), coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) and second-harmonic generation (SHG) microscopy to contrast composition and morphology of lipid deposits against the surrounding matrix of connective tissue with diffraction limited spatial resolution. In this contribution, the spatial distribution of major constituents of the arterial wall and atherosclerotic plaques like elastin, collagen, triglycerides and cholesterol can be simultaneously visualized by a combination of nonlinear imaging methods, providing a powerful label-free complement to standard histopathological methods with great potential for in vivo application.