Tracking Cancer in 3D...

Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a way to shape high-resolution microscopy images into three dimensional renditions of tissue for tracking cancer as it spreads throughout the body. This results in examining the molecular and genetic underpinnings of cancer and how it spreads from a few cells to millions of cancerous cells radiating throughout a gland. In conventional microscopy, tissue is sectioned into ultra-thin segments and stained with a chemical marker which highlight a genetic phenomenon indicative of a specific pathology. Further, the chemical marker is examined under a microscope for cells which are potentially cancerous. For a broader picture, several microscopic images have to be taken to examine which cancerous cells have wormed throughout the tissue. Thus the conventional microscopy method is quite time consuming. Cancer is fundamentally acellular and tissue disease, as such it should be examined in three dimensions. There are a number of ways to map the three-dimensional spread of disease. Berkely's system encompasses resolution, three-dimensional reconstruction, and multi-colour display of thick tissue in a single computer automated process. In three-dimensional method, the computer does the heavy work and examines the cancer's hetrogeneous sprawl of cells. These cells are further examined chemically, labeled to model the activation of estrogen and progesterone hormones.