Photoacoustic remote sensing microscopy for pre-clinical and clinical applications

There is a desperate need for a fast, non-contact, non-invasive, safe and accurate technique that can measure oxygen saturation, oxygen metabolic activity and multilayered histology-like information. Oxygen saturation and oxygen metabolic activity play a vital role in understanding several diseases including early tumour and vision loss diagnosis and treatment. Additionally, when the oncologic care team must to remove a tumour, it is essential that no malignant tissue left behind. The ability to predict tumour aggressiveness, margin and metastatic potential could significantly affect clinical practice in oncology. It is also shown that abnormal retinal oxygen saturation and metabolic activity are the leading causes of vision loss (e.g. age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and glaucoma). The ability to precisely detect aberrant retinal oxygen metabolic activity in a non-contact setting is essential for improving investigations and diagnoses of ocular diseases. In addition, for various applications is surgical oncology and optometry contact is impractical, or the working space and footprint is an issue (e.g. endoscopy and surgery). To address these needs, Mitacs funds are requested to recruit HQPs which is critical to the advance of Histological and Functional Photoacoustic Remote Sensing (HF-PARS) microscopy.

Faculty Supervisor:

Glenn Heppler

Student:

Saad Abbasi

Partner:

illumiSonics Inc.

Discipline:

Engineering - other

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

Program: