Epidemiologists are sleuths who track infections-what causes them and how they spread through a geographical area over time. Another kind of infection sleuth wants to know whether or how infections spread within the living body-as in the case of medical implants that get infected, or tuberculosis that moves from the lungs to other tissues-and whether infection hot spots will succumb to immune-system attack or to drugs over time. Used most often in mice and other small rodents, in vivo optical imaging "is one really powerful tool to noninvasively monitor infection over time," says Lloyd Miller, an associate professor of dermatology and orthopedic surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Using a mouse orthopedic implant model, his group simultaneously tracks the spread of Staphylo-coccus aureus and the responses of the animals' immune cells, such as neutrophils.
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