Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

A time, spatial and phase domain gated multispectral imaging for diagnostics and therapy monitoringThe applicant's research program is in the area of biophotonics, where light is employed for diagnostics and therapy. The advantage of optical diagnostics is minimally or noninvasive interaction while providing important information about structural, metabolic and molecular changes in biotissues. Usage of light therapy and surgery minimizes destruction of non-targeted tissues and does not involve interaction with ionizing radiation. Altogether, biophotonics proposes advanced and in some cases unique solutions for patient care. The applicant's research program is focused on imaging diagnostics, treatment feedback and monitoring. The proposed research strategy concentrates on superficial and endoscopic applications, exploiting multispectral time, spatial and phase gated imaging technologies where each pixel of the image provides information about tissue morphology and metabolism via interpretation of absorption, scattering, refraction index, fluorescence and Raman properties. The proposed research can be conditionally divided into 3 directions: (1) combined fluorescence and Raman microendoscopy for interstitial optical biopsy (currently the main application is the breast surgery); (2) spatial gated imaging for deep interrogation of highly scattering media (currently the main application is skin micro-circulation morphology); (3) a large field of view multi-spectral time domain holographic interferometry imaging (currently the main applications are instant monitoring of antibiotic-bacterial reactions and photodynamic reactions in vitro). During the last 5 years since I applied to my first Discovery:A number of new research modalities were developed and invented in my group, 3 my PhD students and 2 Master students have already finished, 1 my postdoc has become CEO and President of the company Oxilight at Ryerson Biomedzone with current level of investments and funding more than 200K, 1 of my PhD students accepted the position of Assistant Professor in Zurich University, and currently my group includes 3 PhDs, 5 Master students and 4 undegrad research assistants. I have published with my students and postoc 27 peer-reviewed publications, 6 book chapters, 20 proceedings, filed and submitted 4 patent applications. I obtained 5 appointments as a visiting professor (Technical University of Munich, Germany, University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany; University of Montpellier, France; Kagoshima University, Japan; University of Aveiro, Portugal), guest edited 1 journal issue (Photomedicine), accepted 1 invitation into Editorial Board (Biomedical Photonics) , conducted 15 key-note and invited lectures in Canada, USA, Germany, France, Japan, Israel, Ukraine, Russia, Portugal, chairing 4 conferences and participated in 5 conference program committees.