Golden Eye

Our ever-growing ability to see inside bodies and cells has transformed the work of biomedical scientists in recent times. And the hunt for a clearer picture is endless. A major focus today is moving beyond flat, two-dimensional images, towards full 3D visualisations. One new approach uses the glittering properties of gold (and silver) dust to give a glimpse inside. Metal nanoparticles are seeded throughout body tissues that have been rendered transparent, and then encouraged to gradually enlarge. As they increase in size, light shone on them scatters more strongly, so they give a clearer image of the structures they inhabit. This means not only the shape, but also the volume of anomalies such as the pink lesions shown here in the spinal cord of a mouse with multiple sclerosis, can be seen alongside any other disease-related structures. A gold mine of information for researchers.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Abdullah Muhammad Syed and Shrey Sindhwani, and colleagues
• Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Reprinted with permission from the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Copyright 2017 American Chemical Society
• Published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, July 2017