United States: Scientists have discovered something amazing: they used a regular food dye to make the skin of a mouse see-through! This lets them see the blood vessels and organs inside the mouse. Although it’s not known if this will work on human skin because it’s thicker, researchers are excited about the possibility.
Potential Benefits of the New Technology
As reported by HealthDay, Always looking forward as this technology could make the veins more and more visible for the drawing of the blood and make the laser which is based on tattoo removal more straight forward or assist in the early detection and the treatment of the cancer said the study co-leader Guosong Hong a Stanford University assistant professor of the material science and engineering.
For instance, some therapies employ the laser to obliterate detrimental and precancerous cells; however, the process is only feasible around areas close to the skin,” he said in a news released by the U.S National Science Foundation. ″
The Foundation contributed toward the new study, which was released September 5 in the Science publication.
How the Technique Works
For the work, Dr. Zihao Ou, an assistant professor and an educator of physics at the University of Texas (UT) at Dallas, took the lead. In a UT news release, he said that although living skin is not transparent, its fats, cellular fluids and proteins absorb the light wave and scatter them in all directions.
However, when the researchers splashed a solution of water and a harmless yellow food colouring, known as tartrazine, on the skin of a mouse, the entire picture evolved.
“We added the yellow dye, which is a molecule that scatters most of the light, especially blue and ultraviolet light, to skin, which is also opaque, he said: “By themselves, these two materials do not allow most of the light through them to pass through, but when combined, the opacity of the mouse skin was made transparent.
Future Implications
The process may leave many a lay person in a quandary, but in effect this water-dye solution ‘bends’ the incoming light in a manner that corresponds to the components of skin such as fats.
This minimizes what may be referred to as ‘light-scattering’ and makes the skin to become translucent, as if the fog is swept away down to the structures underneath the skin.
“If one knows the basic physical principle concerning this… it is reasonable, but if not, it appears as a kind of sorcery,” explained Ou, who conducted the study as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University before joining UT Dallas faculty.
The effects on mouse skin were remarkable: For instance, while using the solution to massage over the skin of the head of the rodents, this caused constriction or dilation of blood vessels beneath.