Bio Med. Prof. HUABEI JIANG -IMDS Scientific Advisory Board Member, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA
J. Crayton Pruitt Family Professor Ph.D., 1988, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Ph.D., 1995, Dartmouth College
DIFFUSE OPTICAL TOMOGRAPHY OF BREAST CANCER
Breast cancer has been one of the leading causes of death for women in the United States. Yet, the best way of combating the increased incidence of breast cancer is early detection. Therefore, there is a critical need to investigate breast cancer detection methods that could serve either a complementary or competitive role with respect to conventional x-ray mammography, which has unacceptable false negative rate for patients with radiodense breast tissues.
The fundamental hypothesis of our research is that spatially and spectrally resolved NIR diffuse optical tomography (DOT) (REMEMBER FDA ACCEPT IMDS's CTLM AS A DOT DEVICE) approaches offer unparallel opportunity to access the molecular and cellular signatures in breast tissue through endogenous contrast mechanisms. To clinically evaluate optical tomography based on absorption chromophores and scattering parameters, three clinical prototype imagers have been constructed. We have also developed a new contrast mechanism for NIR tomography based on refractive index/phase contrast: the initial clinical results show that the addition of refractive index can significantly improve our ability for distinguishing between malignant and benign breast lesions.