Diagnosing cancer is no easy game. When a doctor detects a possible tumor, a biopsy is ordered. Biopsies, however, are invasive and not very precise, and the evaluation requires the sample be sent out, sliced, stained, and studied under a microscope.
“We’re trying to put the microscope inside the body,” says Department of Biomedical Engineering Professor and Electrical and Computer Engineering researcher Xingde Li. Li is on the trail of revolutionary technologies at the cross-section of medicine and imaging, a field known as biophotonics.
“We created a very thin scanning fiber optic multiphoton microscope that goes inside the body, right to the place of interest, to help diagnose disease immediately, less invasively, and without any staining or processing,” says Li.
Li’s prototype is helping doctors to do remarkable new things. In one of many dramatic examples, Li’s endomicroscope, as he calls it, is being used to assist in brain surgeries.
Excerpted from The BME Newsletter Read the complete story here.