Figure 6. Histopatological validation of the ability of ICG to demarkate tumors. ICG fails to visualize certain tumors.
(a) H&E-stained liver slices from two animals (genetic Myc-driven HCC mouse model) are shown. (b) Although most tumors retain ICG fluorescence in higher concentrations than normal liver tissue, the accumulation is heterogenous. Tumors marked with arrowheads in (a) present intensities less than two-fold over the healthy tissue, which would likely be problematic to detect with certainty in a clinical setting. Dashed circles in b indicate those tumors that are completely missed as they are essentially invisible on the ICG fluorescence image. (c) Photograph of the section prior to embedding.