[14p-2N-1~16] 3.4 Biomedical optics

[14p-2N-14] Visualization of melanoma tumor microvessels using μ-MLDV

〇Tomoaki Kyoden¹, Naruki Shoji¹, Hiroki Ishida², Tsugunobu Andoh³, Shunsuke Akiguchi¹, Noboru Momose¹, Tadashi Hachiga¹ (1.NIT, Toyama College, 2.Okayama Univ. Sci., 3.Univ. of Toyama)

Keywords:LDV,melanoma,in-vivo

Metastatic malignant melanomas have the highest mortality rate of all skin diseases. However, the 5 years survival rate is approximately 100 % by sufficiently removing lesions prior to lymph node metastasis. Therefore, early diagnosis and removal of melanomas are important. Melanoma is generally diagnosed using a microscopy technique, which is used to distinguish between benign nevus and malignant melanomas based on differences in form, color and size. This technique is also used to identify distinctive new blood vessels in tumors. However, much experience is required to become skillful in microscopy and differential diagnosis is not easy. Hence, research has begun into developing a quantitative and accurate diagnostic technique. We demonstrate that using micro multipoint laser Doppler velocimetry (μ-MLDV) for in-vivo imaging of blood microvessels is useful for diagnosing malignant melanomas. In this study, the blood flow velocity in microvessels varied during growth of melanomas transplanted in mouse ears. Mouse ears were observed using μ-MLDV up to 16 days after transplantation. Our purpose is to develop a LDV system that can measure absolute velocity, that can generate tomographs of blood vessels with information in the high spatial resolution to enable individual microvessels. Such a system should be able to observe tumor microvessels and measure the blood flow velocities in a vessel. It would be a very useful instrument for determining cancer recurrence an early stage in medical checkups. We experimentally demonstrate that our developed micro multipoint LDV (μ-MLDV) system has the potential to detect the malignant melanomas.