Rapid Measurement and Analysis of Huge Spectral Images of Tissue Biopsies

The spectral content of a sample provides important information that can be used for further analysis of the material content. Spectral imaging is already in use for many applications, but measuring the spectral image of very large samples is a challenge that so far was not achieved.

We present a novel system for scanning very large spectral images of tissue biopsies that gives images of ~50,000 X 50,000 pixels with a spectrum at every pixel. The spectral resolution is ~10 nm in the range of 400-800 nm. The system works ‘on-the-fly’ while the sample is continuously measured by a fast camera based on Fourier spectroscopy. Using the system on biopsies, we show unprecedented detection of cancer cells based on the spectral information.