Imaging technique aims to reveal composition of tissue

Central to the concept is the invention of a new way to perform in-vivo spectroscopy, or using a pulsing laser light to determine the precise chemical content of tissues in living organisms.

‘The Keck Foundation grant provides vital funding to boost research into this innovative approach,’ said Purdue Provost Debasish ‘Deba’ Dutta. ‘This Keck platform has the potential to resolve the complex machinery of a live cell, representing an advanced medical tool to improve human health.’

The lead researcher is Ji-Xin Cheng, a professor in Purdue’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemistry and scientific director of Label-Free Imaging at Purdue’s Discovery Park.

‘This work is potentially very important because if we know the chemical content of tissue we can do early detection of disease with biomarker sensitivity, and this is not possible with current medical imaging technologies,’ Cheng said in a statement. It is currently not practical to use in-vivo spectroscopy – the analysis of how light interacts with molecules in living tissue – because photons scatter when light shines on tissues, making for inefficient detection of the photons.