Vasudha Chandrashekar

Novel technologies that contribute towards improving diagnosis and treatment in healthcare.

Project Details:

Malignant and healthy tissues have different morphological states and different values with respect to physiological parameters that are reflected in scattering and absorption spectra of these tissues. Optical spectroscopy utilizes these differences (in tissue spectra) that allow disease diagnosis, it is a non-invasive and safe technique. Current clinical technology uses lamps (halogen), spectrographs and fiberoptics for light delivery. However, one of the major drawbacks of this technique is the limited depth resolution. 

To overcome this limitation, ultra short laser pulses can be utilized, each laser pulse follows a different path length and has a different tissue-interaction time. Time-resolved spectroscopy can be used to measure this time delay. A 5-10ps resolution detector can theoretically help in achieving a depth resolution of less than 1mm-2mm. Therefore, the goal of this research project is to establish a novel physics theory, investigate time resolved subdiffuse spectroscopy experimentally through hardware implementation and validation.