Explore more about: Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy

By adding infrared capability to the ubiquitous, standard optical microscope, researchers hope to bring cancer diagnosis into the digital era. Pairing infrared measurements with high-resolution optical images and machine learning algorithms, the researchers created digital biopsies that closely correlated with traditional pathology techniques and also outperformed state-of-the-art infrared microscopes.

Doctors need better ways to detect and monitor heart disease, the leading cause of death in industrialized countries. Researchers with support from NIBIB has developed an improved optical imaging technique that found differences between potentially life-threatening coronary plaques and those posing less imminent danger for patients with coronary artery disease.

Women undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer are checked for tumor cells that may have spread to surrounding tissues, but current technologies miss very small metastatic areas. Now a laser microscopy technique is able to identify these regions with great accuracy.

A new spectroscopic technique reveals that glucose use in live cells provides valuable information about the functional status of cells, tissues, and organs. Shifts in a cell’s use of glucose can signal changes in health and progress of disease.

NIBIB-funded researchers used photoacoustic imaging for rapid measurement of metabolic rate of individual cells from breast tumors—information that can help guide treatment strategies.