The Search for Cancer Using Light Having Longer Wavelength

Excerpt

Why are sunsets so beautiful and red? The scientific answer to this question is blue light that has shorter wavelengths scatters as it passes through the atmospheric layer, while red light that has longer wavelengths is less likely to be scattered by air. Similarly, radio broadcasts are transmitted over a wider area on AM than on FM. The paper published in the current issue, “Comparative study of indocyanine green fluorescence imaging in lung cancer with near-infrared-I/II (NIR-I/ II) windows,” by Jiahui Mi et al.,¹ demonstrated that a system that uses a longer wavelength fluorescence (NIR-II, 1000–1700 nm) than the conventional one (NIR-I, 700–900 nm) in near-infrared fluorescence imaging can potentially visualize lung cancer in deeper locations more distinctly. …