Immunomagnetic microscopy of tumor tissues using quantum sensors in diamond

Significance Understanding cancer’s biomarker, microenvironment, and heterogeneity at the tissue level promises to improve cancer biology and clinical diagnosis and treatment. Many histological imaging techniques have been developed for this purpose. In this study, benefiting from the development of quantum sensing with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, we proposed and experimentally realized micrometer-resolution magnetic imaging of tumor tissues in an NV-diamond magnetic microscope, magnetically imaging and quantifying cancer biomarkers. Moreover, we achieved the correlated magnetic and optical imaging in the same tissue section. The histological magnetometry exhibits excellent signal stability, negligible magnetic background, and accurate magnetic quantification. Our method thus opens the door to micrometer-resolution magnetic imaging of biological tissues and has the potential to influence research and histopathology of cancer.