A team of Japanese scientists found a way to make dead mice "nearly invisible" to examine the rodent without cutting it open.
The researchers, from the RIKEN Quantitative Biology Center and the University of Tokyo, used Clear, Unobstructed Brain Imaging Cocktails and Computational Analysis (CUBIC) to remove color from the tissue. They also used light-sheet fluorescence microscopy.
To perform CUBIC the mouse is injected with a solution that extracts the heme from hemoglobin (a protein found in red blood cells). The mouse is then skinned and soaked in chemicals.
The entire process takes about two weeks to complete.
During the experiment the researchers managed to make all of the major tissues transparent, including the brains, hearts, livers, kidneys and lungs, reports Medical News Today.
The transparency helped the researchers examine the mouse's body in a way they have never done before. The CUBIC method has been used on individual organs before, but never on the entire body at once.
The experiment was done on both diabetic and non-diabetic mice and the characteristic differences between the pancreases were "clearly visible in the images," Medical News Today reported.
The discovery, which was published in the journal Cell, could improve the way scientists study the human body as well.
"It could be used to study how embryos develop or how cancer and autoimmune diseases develop at the cellular level, leading to a deeper understanding of such diseases and perhaps to new therapeutic strategies," Hiroki Ueda, who lead the research team, said in a statement.
Click here to see pictures of the invisible mouse.
