Abstract
Breast cancer affects one in every seven women and is the
second largest cause of death in women in the United States. Early diagnosis of
the disease is critically important in reducing breast cancer mortality rates.
Optical imaging is an emerging tool that offers non-invasive, non-ionizing,
inexpensive method for providing optical contrast between disease and normal
tissues. Specifically, the minimal absorption of the near-infrared optical
signals makes them attractive towards deep tissue imaging applications.The Optical Imaging Laboratory of the Department of
Biomedical Engineering at Florida International University is currently
developing a novel hand-held based optical imager with capabilities of
automated co-registration on any tissue volume and curvature for real time
surface imaging. Furthermore, the implementation of user-friendly
coregistration software provides a method for performing 3D tomography studies
using the hand-held device. The unique features of the handheld probe design
are its ability to simultaneously illuminate the tissue phantom at multiple
point locations, flex the probe into any tissue shape, image a wide range of
tissue volumes, and automatically locate and track the 3D location of the probe
on any given tissue with precision.Development of this hand-held based optical imaging system
will expedite in translating the technology from individual efforts of various
research groups to a more standardized tool towards initial diagnostic studies
in breast cancer. The hand-held probe can be used for optical imaging studies
that both use and do not use external molecular markers. Additionally, the
probe can easily adapt to other imaging applications, with least changes to the
design. Many versions of handheld optical probes have been developed to date,
but the present invention is the first hand-held optical imaging system that
not only performs 3D real-time imaging of curved tissue geometries, but can
also provide 3D depth information by implementing 3D tomographic analysis to
the obtained time-dependent reflectance and trans-illumination measurements.
The imaging tool can be the first of its kind to be available in the clinical
radiology setting to be used as a diagnostic tool towards looking below the
skin, for applications not limited to cancer diagnosis, but any kind of body
imaging, and at various stages of disease or abnormalities.
Benefit
Non-invasivePortableFlexible imaging of tissue curvaturesSimultaneous illumination and detection Coregistration facilities
Market Application
Reduction in imaging time Portability and flexibility to image any tissue volume, shape, and sizeHand-held based imager that can perform 3D tumor localization
Brochure
