"Microscopic characterization of tissues in middle ear/cholesteatoma surgery using shortwave infrared (SWIR)"

The research project is a subproject of an overall BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) funded collaborative project. The joint project runs under the title "Preliminary Investigations of Microbial Load in the Middle Ear & Clinical Testing in Cholesteatoma Diagnosis & Therapy" or under the short title "BetterView". The aim of the overall study is an optimized visualization of medically relevant structures in the middle ear, especially in the context of cholesteatoma surgery. By extending the optical spectral range to the short-wave infrared, including novel contrast and visualization techniques, bacterial inflammation as well as other tissues relevant for surgery, such as bone, cartilage and soft tissue, will be visualized. The knowledge gained will be used to test and adapt the technical properties, handling and image quality of the SWIR microscope for everyday clinical use in order to establish intraoperative SWIR-assisted topographic analysis for the evaluation of biofilm infection of the cholesteatoma and relevant tissue types. The specific content of the subproject will be the first tissue examinations regarding their SWIR signature. In this context, different tissue types and cholesteatoma will be obtained intraoperatively, sectioned, stained, characterized and transferred to the project partners for visualization. Finally, direct comparisons can be made between microscopic tissue boundaries and SWIR-based imaging. The first tissue types have already been extracted and processed, enabling, among other things, differentiation between bone and cholesteatoma tissue in the SWIR range. The study results will largely serve to adapt the technical properties of the prototype SWIR microscope.

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Artikel online veröffentlicht:
12. Mai 2023