Paper
23 February 2010 Detection and capture of single circulating melanoma cells using photoacoustic flowmetry
Christine O'Brien, Jeffrey Mosley, Benjamin S. Goldschmidt, John A. Viator
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
Photoacoustic flowmetry has been used to detect single circulating melanoma cells in vitro. Circulating melanoma cells are those cells that travel in the blood and lymph systems to create secondary tumors and are the hallmark of metastasis. This technique involves taking blood samples from patients, separating the white blood and melanoma cells from whole blood and irradiating them with a pulsed laser in a flowmetry set up. Rapid, visible wavelength laser pulses on the order of 5 ns can induce photoacoustic waves in melanoma cells due to their melanin content, while surrounding white blood cells remain acoustically passive. We have developed a system that identifies rare melanoma cells and captures them in 50 microliter volumes using suction applied near the photoacoustic detection chamber. The 50 microliter sample is then diluted and the experiment is repeated using the new sample until only a melanoma cell remains. We have tested this system on dyed microspheres ranging in size from 300 to 500 microns. Capture of circulating melanoma cells may provide the opportunity to study metastatic cells for basic understanding of the spread of cancer and to optimize patient specific therapies.
© (2010) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Christine O'Brien, Jeffrey Mosley, Benjamin S. Goldschmidt, and John A. Viator "Detection and capture of single circulating melanoma cells using photoacoustic flowmetry", Proc. SPIE 7564, Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing 2010, 75641D (23 February 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.841456
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KEYWORDS
Melanoma

Blood

Photoacoustic spectroscopy

Tumors

Lymphatic system

Cancer

Therapeutics

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