A potential way of detecting circulating tumor cells via laser scanning

Abstract

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are generally considered as seeds for metastases, serving as a clinical biomarker for cancer diagnosis. Due to their low content in the blood, detection of CTCs normally requires an antibody-mediated biological enrichment process, which is rather complicated and time-consuming. In this work, we demonstrate a potential, fast, and cost-effective way of detecting CTCs. That is, CTCs are physically isolated by size using filtration and imaged optically via laser scanning. The filtered and stained blood sample, which is placed on a moving and spinning stage, is illuminated by a 405 nm diode laser. Scattered optical signals are collected by using an ellipsoidal reflective mirror for dark-field imaging. Then CTCs in dark-field images are screened and counted by the clustering algorithm. Our method possesses the advantages of antibody-free and low cost, holding great promise for early diagnosis and prognosis prediction of cancer patients.