Multiphoton microscopy as a diagnostic tool for pathological analysis of sentinel lymph nodes

Multiphoton microscopy has shown a powerful potential for biomedical in vivo and ex vivo analysis of tissue sections and explants. Studies were carried out on several animal organs such as brain, arteries, lungs, and kidneys. One of the current challenges is to transfer to the clinic the knowledge and the methods previously developed in the labs at the preclinical level. For tumour staging, physicians often remove the lymph nodes that are localized at the proximity of the lesion. In case of breast cancer or melanoma, sentinel lymph node protocol is performed: pathologists randomly realize an extensive sampling of formol fixed nodes. However, the duration of this protocol is important and its reliability is not always satisfactory. The aim of our study was to determine if multiphoton microscopy would enable the fast imaging of lymph nodes on important depths, with or without exogenous staining. Experiments were first conducted on pig lymph nodes in order to test various dyes and to determine an appropriate protocol. The same experiments were then performed on thin slices of human lymph nodes bearing metastatic melanoma cells. We obtained relevant images with both endofluorescence plus second-harmonic generation and xanthene dyes. They show a good contrast between tumour and healthy cells. Furthermore, images of pig lymph nodes were recorded up to 120μm below the surface. This new method could then enable a faster diagnosis with higher efficiency for the patient. Experiments on thicker human lymph nodes are currently underway in order to validate these preliminary results.