Ireland's first biological Brillouin microscope at Trinity College Dublin

A project at Trinity College Dublin is now hosting Ireland's first BioBrillouin microscope instrument, applying Brillouin spectroscopy to life sciences and medicine.
This should in particular enhance the College's research into cellular and tissue mechanics for the study of inflammation, cancer, and developmental biology.

Brillouin microscopy offers a route to optical investigation of a biological sample's mechanical and viscoelastic properties, via the phenomenon termed Brillouin light scattering (BLS).

Tissue analysis at Trinity College Dublin

This occurs when photons traveling through matter interact with phonons, compressive waves created in the same matter by external stimulus or compression - effectively a change in density caused by an acoustic wave.

Brillouin spectroscopy has already been put to use probing cell dynamics and testing the mechanical properties of tumors, yielding data about cells' physical properties than can be hard to obtain otherwise.

The ability to map and quantify the compressibility, viscoelasticity and the detailed mechanics of materials and biological tissues non-invasively enables researchers to assess the mechanical properties of live systems without interfering with them, monitoring a system and how it changes over time.

Working alongside instrument vendors CellSense Technologies, the Dublin project hopes to expand the application of BLS to a wider range of biological systems, exploiting how cellular and tissue mechanics can be potent regulators of cell disease, dysfunction and regeneration.

Clinical translation in ophthalmology

To that end the team at the Trinity Centre for Biomedical Engineering has also contributed to a new consensus report on Brillouin light scattering microscopy applied to biological materials, published in Nature Photonics.

The report is intended to improve the comparability of BLS studies by providing reporting recommendations for the measured parameters and detailing common artifacts. Given that most BLS studies of biological matter are still at proof-of-concept stages and use different, often self-built, spectrometers, a consensus statement is particularly timely to ensure unified advancement, noted the authors.

"Regardless of the field's trajectory, it is currently in a serendipitous position," noted the report. "While BLS is still in its infancy in regard to clinical translation, one area where it has transitioned to clinical applications is that of ophthalmology. Here it is used to identify the severity of pathologies such as keratoconus associated with spatial changes in corneal biomechanics."

The Trinity College Dublin team predicts that studying the mechanical properties of live systems will enable leaps forward in the understanding of how inflammation and cancer develop.

"However, it’s also important to understand its use is not limited to biomedical research and related applications," commented Michael Monaghan from the School of Engineering at Trinity. "It will help scientists push boundaries in fields such as materials science, ICT, energy storage, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices and diagnostics."

Source: optics.org