Like any organ, doctors occasionally need to examine the inside of a patient’s brain to see the cells. The most common ways to do this currently are: cutting out a section of the brain and observing it under a microscope or inserting an optical probe inside the brain.
A group of U researchers from diverse disciplines—genetics, neurobiology and engineering—recently created a new way to image the inside of a brain with less damage. It causes less injury because the invasion is much smaller. It is made with a glass surgical needle and it measures 220 micrometers in diameter, not much larger than a single strand of hair and much smaller than any other type of probe used today.