大坪 修¹, 屋ヶ田 和彦¹, 稲生 綱政¹, 洲脇 利孝²

Osamu OTSUBO¹, Kazuhiko YAGATA¹, Tsunamasa INOU¹, Toshitaka SUWAKI²

¹東京大学医科学研究所, ²オリンパス光学工業

¹The Institute of Medical Science, the University of Tokyo, ²Olympus Optical Industry

キーワード : scanning acoustic microscope, echo cancer of liver, liver cirrhosis, Arteriosclerosis

A scanning acoustic microscope (SAM) was recently developed applying the principle that an echo is reflected from the borders of a tissue which shows change of an acoustic impedance.
Specimen of the kidney and spleen of the dog and cancer, liver cirrhosis and arteriosclerosis of human beings were observed both by SAM and an optical microscope and compared with each other. The pictures obtained by SAM were still inferior in resolution than those by the optical microscope. However, it is possible to improve the resolution of image and expected to obtain clear and unique image by SAM.
There are differing views as to the ideal sample thickness. It seems to us that an optical sample thickness must be various according to the specific type of tissue.