Posted by Mike on December 10th, 2007 in biology, optic

Here’s a technology that an old timer can love, as well as an increasing number of not-so-old timers. This article describes an “in vivo” (in the body) spectroscopy system that looks for soft plaque buildup on your arterial walls.

First, why would you care about soft plaque? Well, you could ask Jim Fixx, a marathon runner and the author of the Complete Book on Running, except that he died suddenly of a heart attack while running, likely caused by plaque buildup. For background, Jim was a 159 lb. skinny guy in the best of health (or so they thought).

The article suggests that 80% of all cardiac “events” are caused by this kind of plaque build up. It also discusses a new way to detect these killers before they kill you. Doctors can now detect an inflamed plaque buildup by using “time resolved light induced fluorescence spectroscopy.” In this procedure, an optical fiber is fed through one of your larger arteries. Then, the docs pump a very brief laser pulse through onto a suspected soft plaque body.

All biological matter absorbs quanta (plural of quantum) of light energy -usually in the UV range, and then gives back another quanta at a slightly lower frequency. By analyzing this spectroscopic return, one can determine whether or not the plaque is inflamed, and thus more likely to erupt.

Inflamed plaque is nothing to mess with. Are you beginning to understand why lots of us old folk take a small anti-inflammatory pill a day, like an aspirin? Sure as heck beats

http://www.photonicsonline.com/content/news/article.asp?docid=981183b3 -046a-4c4c-beec-dec483242943

Technorati : fluorescence, heart, spectroscopy