Identification of perineural invasion in pancreatic cancer using multiphoton microscopy

Abstract

Perineural invasion, which is characterized by tumor invasion and spread along nerves, is an important pathological feature of many malignant tumors and is considered to be an important prognostic indicator. Therefore, it would be meaningful to rapidly and directly identify perineural invasion for pancreatic cancer patients. In this work, we try to use multiphoton microscopy (MPM) to detect perineural infiltration in pancreatic cancer. Our aim is to determine whether perineural invasion can be label-freely identified using multiphoton imaging, and experimental results show that MPM is able to quickly and accurately detect this pathological change in the tumor microenvironment without the use of exogenous contrast agents and even can identify different extent of perineural invasion. This study demonstrates MPM has the potential to be an alternative tool to provide a new method to monitor perineural invasion.