The goal of the CRIMSON project was reched: the development of an innovative bio-photonic system for cell/tissue imaging which will be used in the near future as a research tool to understand the cellular origin of diseases. The selected imaging technique is broadband coherent Raman scattering (CRS), extended to the fingerprint region. Broadband CRS brings about several advantages, such as:
1. Label-free imaging, avoiding the use of exogenous or endogenous labels.
2. Living cell imaging capability.
3. High acquisition speed, enabling the observation of dynamic cellular processes by time-lapse imaging.
4. High biochemical sensitivity, thanks to the capability to acquire quantitative hyperspectral images allowing the identification of molecules by their unique vibrational spectrum.
5. The possibility to couple these advantages with endoscopy-based in vivo imaging.
Despite the potential of broadband CRS as a disruptive cell/tissue imaging method, several limitations have hindered the adoption of CRS microscopy by biologists as a standard research tool and the technology remains confined to low Technology Readiness Level (TRL) laboratory applications. Limitations comprise the costs and the need of regular alignment or maintenance, which make the technology not suitable for biomedical research laboratories and the lack of capability to provide rich chemical information and spectroscopic information in the fingerprint region.
With the aim of overcoming the limitations and contributing to making broadband CRS a mature technology used by biology laboratories in cellular diseases’ research, the CRIMSON project has delivered:
1. Two compact and turnkey laser system specifically optimised for broadband CRS.
2. A high-speed broadband CRS acquisition system.
3. Optimised microscopy and endoscopy platforms.
4. Advanced AI analysis tools, including chemometrics, machine- and deep-learning, provide a classification of cells and tissues, enabling the rich data sets obtained with CRS to be interpreted with high sensitivity and specificity.
We have validated the technology through the application to three case studies related to cancer, focusing on inter- and intra-cellular processes occurring in liver, head & neck and thyroid tumours.
CRIL has identified a new market opportunity, which is currently under exploration, expected to be valued at a multi-billion level. This consists in the tablet analysis for quality assessment in the drug manufacturing phase, through fast bro adband SRS imaging. Such an opportunity will be further investigated as a follow-up of CRIMSON. This result has been published in the EU portal “Horizon Result Platform” at the following link:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/horizon-results-platform/78077(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)Finally, the data analysis software developed in WP3 has been published online and is now available to any potential user for free as a web-based cloud tool, see
https://ramapp.io/(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie). This has also been published in the EU portal “Horizon Result Platform” at the following link:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/horizon-results-platform/78162(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)
