The long road to the use of microscope in clinical medicine in vivo: from early pioneering proposals to the modern perspectives of optical biopsy.
For a long period the scientists did not recognized the potentialities of the compound microscope in medicine. Only few scientists recognized the potentialities of the microscope for the medicine; among them G. Campani who proposed the utilization of his microscope to investigate the skin lesions directly on the patient. The proposal was illustrated in a letter Acta Eruditorum of 1686. The recent development of optical techniques, capable of providing in-focus images of an object from different planes with high spatial resolution, significantly increased the diagnostic potential of the microscope directly on the patient.
Surgical, Medical and Dental Department of Morphological Sciences related to Transplant, Oncology and Regenerative Medicine, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy. giovanni.ponti@unimore.it.
Giovanni
G
Ponti
Umberto
U
Muscatello
Markos
M
Sgantzos
D001706:Biopsy; D049670:History, 17th Century; D006801:Humans; D008853:Microscopy / Q000266:history*