Optical Imaging for Minimally Invasive Medical Diagnosis
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Our laboratory conducts interdisciplinary research at the interface of biology, medicine, and engineering towards the development of novel optical imaging technologies to detect, diagnose, and monitor disease processes (particularly cancer) at the cellular and molecular levels in vivo. In current medical practice, a final diagnosis of cancer or a precancerous condition is achieved only after histopathologic analysis of directed biopsies. Biopsies are painful and invasive to the patient. Moreover, many of the complex changes in cellular biochemistry and morphology that accompany the earliest stages of a disease process are not detectable through routine microscopic examination. Emerging photonics technologies provide the exciting opportunity to capitalize on subtle biophysical changes in tissue to provide quantitative, real-time, minimally invasive detection, diagnosis, and monitoring of disease.

In this presentation, I will describe our past, present, and future research aimed at the development and clinical translation of optical imaging tools to improve women’s health care. Specific applications which will be discussed include an optical approach to the early detection of cervical precancers which offers a promising alternative to the Pap smear and colposcopy and the development of a nanoshell-based molecular-specific platform technology for integrated detection and therapy of breast cancer in collaboration with researchers at Rice University and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.