Being able to see the human body from the inside, in as much detail as possible, without having to intervene is a dream of doctors. And thanks to the research carried out by the doctor’s team María Victoria Gómez-Gaviro, head of bio-optics at the medical imaging laboratory at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital, is now a reality. By applying a technique they have been working on for some time, they have managed to make tissues transparent and thus be able to see, in 3D, the length of veins or all the branches of a neuron.
As Gómez-Gaviro explains, it is all due to the coordinated effort of a multidisciplinary team that includes doctors, engineers and pharmacists. “One of its lines of research is dedicated to the study of 3D imaging of biological organs and tissues,” he adds. And thanks to this work, “a very novel technology has been developed that consists of making organs transparent, in order to be able to analyze large volumes of tissue and have a lot of information.”
As practical cases, the doctor explains, it is possible “to see the entire length of a blood vessel, its branches; and in the brain, seeing the entire length of a neuron and its branches, and not just those found in the cut section, allows analyzing human samples, such as biopsies, which will allow more precise diagnoses.
In addition, samples intended for research can also be analyzed, for the development of new drugs for example.
The main thing is to make the tissues transparent, allowing you to see what is behind them. To do this, the doctor says, “we use a cocktail of reagents that remove fat from the tissues, making them opaque.”
Until now, this methodology was carried out manually, which was “very laborious and tedious,” comments Gómez-Gaviro. For this reason, “our team, in collaboration with a national company, has patented and developed equipment that automatically processes this technique, to introduce it into daily medical practice.” Specifically, this has been possible thanks to a licensing agreement that the Biomedical Research Foundation of the Gregorio Marañón Hospital (FIBHGM) – as an instrument for the promotion, management and development of research – has signed with Plane Light.
“We use a cocktail of reagents that remove fat from tissues, making them opaque.”
Maria Victoria Gomez-Gaviro
Head of the Biooptics Department of the Medical Imaging Laboratory of the Gregorio Marañón Hospital
In this way, large amounts of information are obtained on specific organs, which allows to further refine the diagnosis, having more complete and exhaustive data, say the researchers of the project carried out at the Gregorio Marañón Research Institute. (IiSGM). The technique has already demonstrated its usefulness to analyze biological samples in the laboratory, determine the response to treatments, as well as develop new drugs.
