how doctors use light to diagnose diseases

You do not feel well. You’ve had a throbbing headache, dizziness, and vomiting all week after your previous few meals.

You visit your GP to get answers and sit as he shines a light in your eyes, orders a blood test and asks for imaging tests.

Everything your GP has done relies on light. These are only a number of the optical technologies which might be having a huge effect on the best way we diagnose diseases.

1. On-site testing

Point-of-care diagnostics allow doctors to test patients on-site and get answers in minutes, slightly than sending samples to a lab for evaluation.

A “flashlight” utilized by a family doctor to look contained in the eye (so-called ophthalmoscope) is an excellent example. This allows doctors to detect abnormal blood flow in the attention, deformation of the cornea (the outermost transparent layer of the attention), or swelling of the optic discs (the circular section in the back of the attention where the nerve connection to the brain begins). Swollen discs are an indication of increased pressure inside the top (or, within the worst case scenario, a brain tumor) which may be attributable to causing your headaches.

Invention lasers and LEDs has made many other miniaturized technologies available on the bedside or within the clinic, slightly than within the laboratory.

A famous example is pulse oximetry, during which a clip attached to the finger provides information concerning the level of blood oxygenation. He does this through measuring different reactions of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood to different colours of light.

Pulse oximetry is utilized in hospitals (and sometimes at home) to monitor the health of the respiratory system and heart. In hospitals, additionally it is a precious detection tool heart defects in infants.

2. Looking at molecules

Now let’s return to this blood test. Analyzing a small amount of blood allows you to diagnose many various diseases.

A tool called an automatic “complete blood count analyzer” that checks overall health indicators. This device directs focused beams of light through blood samples stored in small glass tubes. It counts the variety of blood cells, determines their specific type and provides the extent of hemoglobin (a protein in red blood cells that distributes oxygen within the body). Within minutes this machine can deliver snapshot general health.

To obtain more specific disease markers, blood serum is separated from heavier cells by centrifugation in a rotating instrument called a centrifuge. The serum is then subjected to special chemical stains and enzyme tests that change color depending on the presence of certain molecules, which could also be an indication of disease.

These color changes can’t be detected with the naked eye. However, a beam of light from an instrument called a spectrometer can detect small amounts of those substances within the blood and determine whether and at what concentrations biomarkers of diseases are present.

3. Medical imaging

Let’s look again on the medical images ordered by your GP. The development of fiber optic technology, which became famous for transforming high-speed digital communications (comparable to NBN), allows light to enter the body. Result? High resolution optical imaging.

A typical example is endoscopeduring which fibers with a small camera on the top are inserted into natural body openings (comparable to the mouth or anus) to examine the intestines or respiratory tract.

Surgeons can use the identical technology through tiny incisions to view the within the body on a video screen during surgery laparoscopic surgery (also generally known as keyhole surgery) to diagnose and treat diseases.

What concerning the future?

Advances in nanotechnology and a greater understanding of how light interacts with our tissues are leading to latest light-based tools that help diagnose disease. These include:

• nanomaterials (materials on a particularly small scale, many 1000’s of times smaller than the width of a human hair). They are utilized in next-generation sensors and latest diagnostic tests

• wearable optical biosensors nail size will be taken into consideration in devices comparable to watches, contact lenses and finger bands. These devices enable non-invasive measurement of sweat, tears and saliva in real time

• AI tools to analyze how blood serum scatters infrared light. This enabled scientists to construct extensive database scatter patterns to detect any cancer

• a kind of non-invasive imaging, the so-called optical coherence tomography for more detailed imaging of the attention, heart and skin

• fiber optic technology that enables a small microscope to be introduced into the body the tip of the needle.

So the following time you see your primary care doctor who performs (or orders) certain tests, chances are high that a minimum of certainly one of those tests will depend upon light to diagnose the disease.