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6760 Forest Park Pkwy, St. Louis, MO 63105, USA

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Presenting on “Intraoperative Label-Free Optical Imaging for Real-Time Assessment of Tumor Margins, Markers, and the Microenvironment”.

Stephen A. Boppart, MD, PhD, Professor and Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Bioengineering, Director and Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, will speak on Thursday, February 20, 2025 at 10:00 am CT in Whitaker 218.

Abstract: Innovations in biomedical imaging have historically led to new fundamental discoveries in the life sciences and new detection and diagnostic technologies in medicine and surgery.  Label-free intraoperative and intravital optical imaging, and imaging of fresh, unstained, resected tissue specimens during surgery, offer a wealth of new biomarkers for assessing the tumor microenvironment and diagnosing disease.  Intraoperative optical coherence tomography (OCT) using handheld probes has been one label-free approach to resolve structural features indicative of positive tumor margins and locoregional lymph nodes in clinical human studies.  Using nonlinear optics to generate new excitation wavelengths and manipulate the light stimulus in new ways, Simultaneous Label-free Auto-fluorescence Multi-harmonic (SLAM) microscopy can achieve fast and simultaneous visualization of the rich intrinsic molecular and metabolic features within tissues.  In addition to the real-time visualization of the tumor and surrounding microenvironment, quantitative machine/deep learning analyses of these multi-dimensional datasets can be used to identify more selective clinical biomarkers for breast cancer.  In particular, tumor-associated extracellular vesicles (EVs) were segmented using fully convolutional networks and analyzed via their optical signatures and spatial distributions.  With new ARPA-H support for Precision Surgical Interventions, the integration and clinical demonstration of OCT and these nonlinear imaging techniques suggests the broad potential of these stain-free, slide-free, imaging technologies and methodologies for real-time intraoperative surgical guidance and decision-making, and for the histopathological assessment of living biopsy specimens.

Registration to attend virtually is required. Please register.

  • Vahid Abbasian

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