Ellipsoidal mirror dark-field scanning for detection of circulating tumor cells

Abstract

The detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) plays a very important role in the prevention and treatment of cancer. However, because of the low content of tumor cells in peripheral blood, these cells have always been difficult to detect. An efficient and accurate imaging method, the dark-field scanning imaging method, was innovatively proposed for the detection of CTCs in filtered and colored peripheral blood specimens. Here, the original dark-field scanning system was improved. By introducing an ellipsoidal mirror system, the noise in the sampling process is greatly reduced, and the sampling accuracy is significantly improved. Meanwhile, an automatic identification algorithm was developed to identify and screen CTCs in a large number of blood samples. Comparing with the other CTC detection methods, this method does not require a complex biological enrichment process, which may cause loss and destruction of CTCs.