Optical imaging in vivo with a focus on paediatric disease: technical progress, current preclinical and clinical applications and future perspectives

To obtain information on the occurrence and location of molecular events as well as to track target-specific probes such as antibodies or peptides, drugs or even cells non-invasively over time, optical imaging (OI) technologies are increasingly applied. Although OI strongly contributes to the advances made in preclinical research, it is so far, with the exception of optical coherence tomography (OCT), only very sparingly applied in clinical settings. Nevertheless, as OI technologies evolve and improve continuously and represent relatively inexpensive and harmful methods, their implementation as clinical tools for the assessment of children disease is increasing. This review focuses on the current preclinical and clinical applications as well as on the future potential of OI in the clinical routine. Herein, we summarize the development of different fluorescence and bioluminescence imaging techniques for microscopic and macroscopic visualization of microstructures and biological processes. In addition, we discuss advantages and limitations of optical probes with distinct mechanisms of target-detection as well as of different bioluminescent reporter systems. Particular attention has been given to the use of near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent probes enabling observation of molecular events in deeper tissue

MEASUREMENT OF THE LIFETIME OF THE CHARMED BARYON LAMBDA(c)

We present results on a sample of Λc decays obtained in the NA32 experiment in 1985 using charge-coupled devices for vertex reconstruction and a trigger on Λc → pK − $\pi$ + (and charge conjugate). We observe a distinct peak at the Λ c mass on zero background. The lifetime of the Λc is determined to be (1.4 ± 0.3 0.5 ±0.3)x10 −13 s based on a sample of 14 events