The mission of the Biophotonics Research and Technology Development Laboratory is to promote better healthcare through advancements in biophotonics technology - a field at the interface of physical sciences, engineering, biology and medicine. This is accomplished through a series of research projects that enable early diagnosis and intraoperative demarcation of tumors, prevention of stroke and heart attack, and cancer therapy.
The Biophotonics Research Lab was established in 2001 within the Department of Surgery and with support from the Burns and Allen Research Institute and the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute. The Biophotonics Research Lab is also affiliated with the Minimally Invasive Surgical Technologies Institute (MISTI) within the Department of Surgery.
- Portable laser-induced lifetime fluorescence spectroscopy and imaging instruments
- Nonparametric numerical methods for fast analysis of time-resolved fluorescence data
- Studies of fiberoptic probe designs for spectroscopic investigation of tissues
- Fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) techniques
- Optical MEMS for surgical microsystems
- Minimally invasive surgical systems
- Cardiovascular diseases (diagnosis of unstable atherosclerotic plaques that lead to stroke and heart disease)
- Oncology - neurosurgery (intraoperative diagnosis of brain tumors margins)
- Tissue engineering (in-situ evaluation of osteogenic differentiation)
- Analysis of structural proteins in tissue
- Peripheral benzodiazepine receptor-targeted molecular probes for brain tumor imaging
- Intracellular calcium regulation
- Metabolic cofactors (NADH) expression
- Electroperturbative effects on cytoplasmic membrane, intracellular compartments and function with application to cancer therapy
