Research in Optical Diagnosis

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD), affects nearly 2 million Americans, and the incidence is increasing worldwide. As two distinct forms of IBD, UC and CD require different medical and surgical treatments. For more information Click Here.

The overexpression of HER2 occurs in approximately 25 percent of breast cancers and is associated with a higher risk of recurrence, shorter survival rate, and poorer prognosis. In addition, breast cancers that overexpress HER2 have been shown to be more resistant to certain chemotherapeutic agents. For more information Click Here.

Prematurity is the second leading cause of neonatal mortality. Currently, there is no way to accurately predict when a woman will give birth, and over half of all preterm births do not fall into any high-risk category. For more information Click Here.

Cervical cancer is the second most common malignancy among women worldwide. A "See and Treat" protocol with adequate sensitivity and specificity would significantly improve this disease's management in low-resource settings. For more information Click Here.

A handheld imaging device has been developed in conjunction with Montana State University. This device uses an 830 nm laser and a MEMS mirror to produce a confocal microscopy image of human skin in vivo at various tissue depths in the epidermis and dermis. For more information Click Here.

The current standard for diagnosis of suspicious skin lesions involves biopsy followed by histopathology. This paradigm is subjective, painful, time-consuming, and costly. Our lab is currently developing a combined Raman spectroscopy – optical coherence tomography (RS-OCT) instrument for diagnosis of skin disease. The combination of these two techniques allows both real-time imaging of the lesion’s microstructural features as well as highly specific characterization of the lesion’s biochemical composition. For more information Click Here.