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I'm Stephen Boppart.
I'm an Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering here at the University of Illinois.
My lab, the Biophotonics Imaging Lab, develops new
optical imaging technologies and then translates those into clinical applications.
Biophotonics imaging is the science of how light interacts with tissue, with cells, and molecules
And we use light for a lot of different applications:
for detecting disease, diagnosing disease, tracking changes in biological processes.
And light is really a powerful tool because it gives us a lot of different information
coming back from the tissue...
different wavelengths that go in and the wavelengths that come out...
how they're absorbed or scattered.
And all that allows us to really image disease from the molecular level,
to the cells, the tissues, up to organs even.
So, one example is OCT.
Optical Coherence Tomography works a lot like ultrasound does,
but it uses light, instead of sound, on a scale that's microscopic.
So we can really see small features.
So, in one example, are ear infections.
This is the number one place where over prescription of antibiotics takes place.
And so, it's simply because that physician doesn't have enough information
to really know if there is an infection there or not.
They're only looking at the surface of the eardrum,
where the infection is behind the eardrum.
Now, with that OCT, we can image behind the eardrum,
and see if there's fluid present, or if there's bacteria or biofilm that's present back there.
And, if there is, then that's a clear indication to use antibiotics for that treatment.
We've got some really exciting studies going on where we take our system into
the operating room at Carl Foundation Hospital.
And we're measuring and imaging these tissues that get resected,
say, during breast cancer surgery...
We're assessing tumor margins. We're looking at lymph nodes to see if the cancer has spread.
Instead of the standard way of taking out tissue, taking a biopsy, and then
processing it, sending it to the pathology lab where they stain it and
section it and look under a microscope, we can see those details in the living specimen.
So, in real time, the surgeon can scan the margins of that tumor mass and
determine right away if there are tumor cells present.
And, in fact, it's been really interesting that, using this type of molecular sensing
called Raman Spectroscopy, we found that the areas of, say, in breast cancer,
clearly the tumor area is abnormal.
But the area elsewhere, near that tumor has undergone molecular changes.
The tumor cells have transformed that tissue in different ways.
And so, in one case, this is truly fundamental biology of cell signaling and carcinogenesis -
how cancer begins and how those cells, really inform the rest of the body...
that these changes are happening.
Now we can look at the other end of the spectrum and say that those
same signaling molecules we detect can be used as biomarkers for disease.
So now, if we come in with our light and we can sense the tissue
and look for those molecular signatures, that's going to precede the the structural changes
by weeks, or months, or even years.
And now we've been really trying to identify the different applications
for what we can see with the system.
And the images that are revealed from the system are just remarkable.
They're just information rich.
And we can see so many new things that we can't see on standard histology.
And that's what's exciting, as well as a challenge,
because we're seeing things that no one else has seen before.
But then trying to understand what those mean is a daunting task.
In fact, our technologies are revealing that maybe we even have to change that standard --
to go beyond just looking at the structural features the pathologist looks at,
to consider what the molecular changes may be...
and be able to see things that can't be seen any other way.
And that's very exciting.
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