Photo used for illustrative purposes.

Moustafa Al Zoubi, Gulf Today

Scientists at Australia's La Trobe University developed coloured microscopic slides based on the "Nano" technology, and they called them "NanoMslide."

The slides can show cancer cells in distinct colours, allowing experts to more easily detect signs of the disease.

The new technology is based on the physics of plasmons and silver, where the thin layers of silver provide full fields of free electrons which help to detect cells, and reveal the composition of the cells placed on them through a colour-coded light display.

The new technique diagnoses cancer earlier and faster than before, without using labour-intensive stains which can damage samples.

Nanotechnology slides require much less preparation time than current techniques, besides, results can be obtained in less than 10 minutes. They also identify the parts of the tumor to be removed during surgery.

“Current methods for imaging tissues mostly rely on staining or labeling cells to make them visible under a microscope,” said physicist and chemist Brian Abbe of La Trobe University. “Even with staining or labeling, it can be difficult for a pathologist to detect cancer cells, with the potential for misdiagnosis of some samples, especially during the very early stages of the disease,”