[caption id="" align="alignright" width="386"] Porcine skin tissue exposed to ENM-containing solution and mapped against the reference spectral library (RSL). Rows correspond to porcine skin tissue exposed to ceria and alumina ENMs, respectively. Each column shows the same field of view imaged with different techniques. The first column corresponds to a brightfield image of a hematoxylin and eosin stained sample (40x magnification). The area enclosed in a red square was magnified to 100x and viewed using EDFM (column 2) and HSI (column 3), where ENMs appear as high contrast elements (arrows). Column 4 shows the HSI image mapped against the RSL, where the positive matches are shown in blue for ceria and in magenta for alumina. From top to bottom, the rows correspond to: stratum corneum, dermis, and subcutaneous tissue, respectively.[/caption]

Sara Brenner, MD, MPH and colleagues at SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly), the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and SUNY Stony Brook have demonstrated a novel method for the rapid visualization and identification of engineered nanoparticles in tissues. This research, published in Microscopy Research and Technique ("Hyperspectral imaging of nanoparticles in biological samples: Simultaneous visualization and elemental identification"), presents a method for utilizing enhanced darkfield microscopy (EDFM) and hyperspectral imaging (HSI) to easily and rapidly image nanoparticles in tissues from toxicology studies and map the distribution of nanoparticles throughout biological samples based on elemental composition.

“The current gold standard for visualization of nanoparticles in tissue samples is electron microscopy, which is highly time- and resource-intensive,” said Dr. Sara Brenner, Assistant Professor of Nanobioscience and Assistant Vice President for NanoHealth Initiatives at SUNY Poly and corresponding author of the study. “Availability of an alternative, rapid, and cost-effective method would relieve this analytical bottleneck, not only in nanotoxicology, but in many fields where nanoscale visualization is critical. The time and cost burdens associated with nanomaterial analysis and characterization in complex media are hindering progress in many research disciplines.”

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