Study of Biomedical Specimens Using Scanning Acoustic Microscopy

Abstract

Microscopy is a paramount part of science and the medical field. The optical microscope (OM), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and atomic force microscope (AFM) are commonly used for the imaging of biomedical cells and tissues. Unfortunately, these conventional microscopes have major disadvantages. The atomic force microscope is still underdeveloped in imaging of living biomedical specimens. The OM and SEM require dead specimens for imaging, and cannot image the subsurface of thick specimens. Development of the scanning acoustic microscope (SAM) is a solution to these problems. The SAM has the ability to image living specimens for extended periods of time without harming them, can image the subsurface of the sample, can image thick specimens, and can obtain information about mechanical properties of the specimen. In this study images of esophagus tissue were obtained using an OM, SEM, and SAM. While OM and SEM have been established as valuable tools for imaging of biological tissue samples not much basic imaging of histological structures of biological specimens has been done using the SAM. The goal was to create an imaging baseline for the SAM that showed that it could function at the level of the OM and the SEM. When imaging the tissues, all three of the microscopes yielded similar images.