New Lasers

• Biomedical imaging techniques such as X-Ray, MRI, CAT, PET, and Ultrasonic imaging have become important tools for physician diagnosis
• Optical Biomedical Imaging techniques offer the potential of less-expensive, higher resolution, noninvasive biomedical imaging in highly scattering human tissue without ionizing radiation
• Nonlinear spectroscopy techniques may help to probe metabolic function in human tissue and to differentiate cancerous and non-cancerous tissue
• Biomedical Imaging Techniques under development:
  • Nonlinear Optical Multiphoton Interferometric scanning microscopy for providing higher sensitivity microscopic tissue examinations
  • Optical Coherence-Based Imaging for high resolution imaging (to see smaller tissue abnormalities and tumors) at much greater depths in highly scattering human tissue
  • Optical Spectroscopic Imaging (Fluorescence and Raman Spectroscopy) for tissue characterization and discrimination (e.g., between cancerous and non-cancerous tissue)
• Specific applications for these new medical imaging techniques include skin cancer detection, characterization of coronary artery disease, endoscopic “optical biopsies,” and potentially as a safer (light would be used instead of ionizing radiation) alternative to mammography for breast cancer detection.