Low cost semi-confocal molecular imaging with cold light source

Imaging bio-molecules especially in tissues, cells and even in in-vitro live conditions require expertise not only in staining and tagging of the particular molecules of interest but also their imaging so as to make any meaningful analysis and quantification of the obtained images. This necessitates a microscopic facility which can grab fluorescent images with minimum bleaching of the dyes and gives clear and crisp images without the blur caused by out of focus light. In this context ApoTome provides an alternative with metal halide light source and structural illumination with the help of grids, along with integrated image processing modality to generate images with digital interface. In the current study ApoTome was used to grab images of p63 and E-cadherin on histological sections of Oral Submucous Firosis an oral pre-cancer. The obtained images could aptly localize the expression of p63 and E-cadherin and distinguish the early and advanced stages of the precancer and did not show any effect of photo-bleaching. This demonstrated the applicability of ApoTome and its potential impact on diagnostics.