Development of Rapid Circulating Tumor Cells Detection Instrument based on Large Field of View Optical Imaging Technology with High Resolution

Abstract

Circulating tumor cell (CTC) detection is used to identify malignant tumor cells that are disseminated in the patient's circulating blood. It has been widely used in early tumor classification, prognosis judgment and efficacy evaluation. It also plays an important role in finding new tumor markers and developing new anti-tumor drugs. The existing methods to detect CTCs can only be combined with cells enrichment and fluorescence imaging, which is called separation and identification of CTCs. Cell enrichment leads to cell omission, and small fluorescence imaging field leads to long detection time, which affects clinical application. In this paper, 7.5ml whole-blood large-size slices were used to avoid cell selection. The two-step imaging method was adopted. The first step is the large-size slices fast imaging based on the large field of view (LFOV) and high resolution optical system, which is used to initially locate target CTCs. The second step is target CTCs accurately identifying by fluorescence imaging. Through this method, the detection time is greatly reduced, the detection efficiency is greatly improved, accuracy is higher because of the avoidance of cells misdetection. A new solution for clinical detection of CTC cells is provided, which is conducive to promoting the CTCs count as a routine blood test item.