Application study of the optical biopsy system for small experimental animals

An optical biopsy system for small experimental animals has been developed. The system includes endoscope probe, portable probe and two kinds of miniaturized Raman probes. The micro Raman probe (MRP) is made of optical fibers and the ball lens hollow optical fiber Raman probe (BHRP) is made of hollow fiber. The former has large focal depth and suitable to measure average spectra of subsurface tissue. The latter has rather small focal depth and it is possible to control focal length by selecting ball lens attached at the probe head. It is suitable to survey materials at the fixed depth in the tissue. The system is applied to study various small animal cancer models, such as esophagus and stomach rat models and subcutaneous mouse models of pancreatic cancers. In the studies of subcutaneous tumor model mouse, it is suggested that protein conformational changes occur in the tumor tissue within few minutes after euthanasia of the mouse. No more change is observed for the following ten minutes. Any alterations in the molecular level are not observed in normal skin, muscle tissues. Since the change completes in such a short time, it is suggested that this phenomenon caused by termination of blood circulation.