Utilization of Bio-Imaging in Cancer Studies

Introduction

“Seeing is believing” is an old saying used to justify the necessity of visual evidence for a hypothesis. Science itself would not have evolved without the inventions of microscopes and telescopes. Today’s science is highly dependent upon visual shreds of evidence. Biology and its branches employ most of the technology for visualization of not only the problems but also in unsheathing the solutions to those problems and this had lead to the emergence of a whole new science called bio-imaging. Biomedical Imaging or bio-imaging can be defined as a process of acquiring the biological information in the form of images or visual effects while least affecting the concerned biological process (Vadivambal R., & Jayas D. S. et al., 2016).

Initially, only light microscopy was prevalent but it was after the 1960s that the real advancement started with the emergence of wide-field fluorescence microscopy till the early 1990s. During the decade of the 1990s further dye-based fluorescent techniques were developed such as monodensylcadaverine for autophagy detection. However, with the dawn of the new century, new horizons were explored in the field of live cell imaging (Vadivambal R., & Jayas D. S. et al., 2016; Ghamsari M. S. 2018). Many new techniques were then developed to generate high-resolution images some of which will be discussed in this chapter. Today the conventional techniques are empowered with tools such as machine learning and pattern recognition to better interpret the data and draw conclusions from radiology scans, histopathology slides, etc. (Bizzego A. et al., 2019). The field of bio-imaging is vast, thus we will limit our focus to the techniques which are extensively employed in cancer research and diagnosis.