Scientists at the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) in San Diego, California have devised a way to optically image tumors with unprecedented clarity using quantum dots. These nano structures are tiny particles, only a few nanometers wide, that generate light of a specific wavelength when they’re themselves stimulated by a light beam. On their own quantum dots are quite bright, but their signal gets washed out by other nearby quantum dots. To clean the signal and be able to see tumors better, the SBP team used a so-called “etchant”.