The Future of Everything The future of transparent tissue
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Feb 7, 2025 Guosong Hong, a materials scientist and physicist at Stanford University, unveils groundbreaking techniques to turn living tissue transparent using a common food dye. This innovation promises to revolutionize medical imaging, allowing doctors to see deep into the body without surgery. Hong discusses the challenges of light penetration in biological tissues and explores intriguing applications, including optogenetics and ultrasound for non-invasive treatments. He also shares insights on the transparency found in aquatic species, highlighting nature's mysteries.
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Light Scattering in Tissue
- Biological tissues scatter light due to varying refractive indices of water and lipids.
- This limits light penetration, hindering biomedical applications like fluorescence imaging.
UV Absorption and Refractive Index
- Water and lipids have different refractive indices because of their varying UV absorption.
- Manipulating water's UV absorption can align its refractive index with lipids, enabling transparency.
Doritos Dye Experiment
- A common food dye (Yellow 5, found in Doritos) was used to test the transparency method.
- Soaking chicken breast in the dye solution made it transparent within minutes.