High resolution imaging of sentinel lymph nodes (SLN) from melanoma patients is a crucial approach to specify staging and determine individuals requiring adjuvant treatment. Current histologic SLN analysis has the substantial drawback that only a small portion of the node is sampled while most of the tissue is discarded which might explain the high false-negative rate of SLN diagnosis. Therefore, we developed an algorithm-enhanced light sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) approach to three-dimensionally reconstruct the entire SLN with single-cell resolution. We comprehensively quantified total tumor volume while simultaneously visualizing cellular and anatomical hallmarks of the associated SLN architecture. In a first-in-human prospective study (21 SLN from 11 melanoma patients), LSFM not only identified all metastases seen histologically, but additionally detected metastases not recognized by routine histology. Thus, our 3-D digital pathology approach can increase sensitivity and accuracy of SLN-metastasis detection and potentially alleviate the need for conventional histopathological assessment in the future.

Contact for enquiries:
Professor Dr. Joachim Klode University Hospital Essen Department of Dermatology Hufelandstraße 55, 45147 Essen, Germany Phone.: +49 201 723-1812 Fax: +49 201 723-5424 E-Mail: joachim.klode@uk-essen.de

Professor Dr. Matthias Gunzer University Hospital Essen Institute for Experimental Immunology and Imaging Hufelandstraße 55, 45147 Essen, Germany Phone: +49 201 183 6640 Fax: +49 201 183 6642 matthias.gunzer@uni-due.de