Non-linear optical imaging and quantitative analysis of the pathological changes in normal and carcinomatous human colorectal muscularis

Non-linear optical (NLO) imaging based on two-photon excitation (2PE) and second harmonic generation (SHG) has been widely used to image microstructures of biomedical specimens over the last two decades. We employed NLO imaging technology to investigate the histology of normal and carcinomatous human colorectal muscularis in transverse and longitudinal views. Results show there are different patterns of pathological changes of muscularis in tissue structure and cell morphology from both views. The NLO imaging provides identical histological information as the H&E images but requires neither stain nor tissue processing. Our study indicates that NLO imaging technology shows more detailed microstructure, which is a critical complementary tool in pathological diagnosis of colorectal tumours. It suggests that NLO imaging could be a very important diagnostic tool to help pathologists realise the real time early detection of human colorectal tumours in the foreseeable future.