Biomedical Imaging Technology

Science has opened a new way of high-precision diagnosis and treatment of deadly diseases such as cancer.

The Nanoparticle Research Center at Institute for Basic Science (IBS) announced on February 18 that Professor Hyun Taek-hwan’s team has developed high-resolution biomedical imaging technology after their 7-year-long research efforts. This technology enables to look into diseased tissue at a 1,000 times higher resolution than Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

The biomedical industry proposed to apply semiconductor nanoparticles to diagnosis of human diseases in the late 1990s, but all efforts have failed due to semiconductor’s harmful elements. However, Professor Hyun’s team has succeeded in obtaining high-resolution biomedical images by synthesizing ZnS nanocrystals composed of zinc and sulfur, human body’s essential and non-toxic elements, instead of semiconductor nanoparticles.

Professor Hyun explained, “We made observations to the 1㎛ or 2㎛ scale in the laboratory. This is a much higher resolution than ㎜-scale MRI. If we can observe diseased tissue at a cellular level, we can precisely diagnose the extent of malignancy and metastasis, and offer the clear boundaries between normal tissue and diseased tissue.”

This achievement was published in the online edition of the “Nature Materials,” a globally renowned journal in the field of material engineering, as of February 18.

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