Feb. 1, 2013 ? Sound waves are widely used in medical imaging, such as when doctors take an ultrasound of a building fetus. Now scientists have grown a approach to use sound to examine hankie on a most tinier scale. Researchers from a University of Bordeaux in France deployed high-frequency sound waves to exam a acerbity and flexibility of a nuclei of particular tellurian cells. The scientists envision that a examine could eventually assistance answer questions such as how cells belong to medical implants and because healthy cells spin cancerous.
“We have grown a new non-contact, non-invasive apparatus to magnitude a automatic properties of cells during a sub-cell scale,†says Bertrand Audoin, a highbrow in a mechanics laboratory during a University of Bordeaux. “This can be useful to follow dungeon activity or brand dungeon disease.†The work will be presented during a 57th Annual Meeting of a Biophysical Society (BPS), hold Feb. 2-6, 2013, in Philadelphia, Pa.
The technique that a investigate organisation used, called picosecond ultrasonics, was primarily practical in a wiring attention in a mid-1980s as a approach to magnitude a density of semiconductor chip layers. Audoin and his colleagues, in partnership with a investigate organisation in biomaterials led by Marie-Christine Durrieu from a Institute of Chemistry Biology of Membranes Nano-objects during Bordeaux University, blending picosecond ultrasonics to investigate vital cells. They grew cells on a steel image and afterwards flashed a cell-metal interface with an ultra-short laser beat to beget high-frequency sound waves. Another laser totalled how a sound beat propagated by a cells, giving a scientists clues about a automatic properties of a particular dungeon components.
“The aloft a magnitude of sound we create, a smaller a wavelength, that means a smaller a objects we can probe†says Audoin. “We use gigahertz waves, so we can examine objects on a sequence of a hundred nanometers.†For comparison, a cell’s iota is about 10,000 nanometers wide.
The organisation faced hurdles in requesting picosecond ultrasonics to investigate biological systems. One plea was a fluid-like element properties of a cell. “The light pinch routine we use to detect a automatic properties of a dungeon is most weaker than for solids,†says Audoin. “We had to urge a vigilance to sound ratio but regulating a high-powered laser that would repairs a cell.†The organisation also faced a plea of healthy dungeon variation. “If we examine silicon, we do it once and it’s finished,†says Audoin. “If we examine a iota we have to do it hundreds of times and demeanour during a statistics.â€
The organisation grown methods to overcome these hurdles by contrast their techniques on polymer capsules and plant cells before relocating on to tellurian cells. In a entrance years a organisation envisions study cancer cells with sound. “A carcenogenic hankie is stiffer than a healthy tissue,†records Audoin. “If we can magnitude a acerbity of a cells while we yield opposite drugs, we can exam if we are means to stop a cancer during a dungeon scale.â€
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