Two-photon microscopy in pre-clinical and clinical cancer research

Abstract

The applications of two-photon microscopy (TPM) on pre-clinical and clinical study of human cancer and diseases are reviewed in this paper. First, the principle of two-photon excitation (TPE) is introduced. The resulting advantages of TPM for imaging studies of animal models and human samples are then elaborated. Subsequently, the applications of TPM on various aspects of tumor studies, including tumor angiogenesis, invasion and metastasis, tumor microenvironment and metabolism are introduced. Furthermore, studies of TPM on clinical human skin biopsy and the development of two-photon microendoscopy are reviewed. Finally, potential future directions are discussed.

Keywords

two-photon microscopy (TPM) / intravital imaging / pre-clinical tumor studies / cancer early detection / cancer diagnosis / medical imaging

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Acknowledgements

The author gratefully thanks Prof. Shaoqun Zeng from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (Wuhan, China) for his encouragement and support for this paper.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg