Research Overview
This research is in collaboration with Prof. Gregory Kowalski in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.
The current method of cancer detection in human skin is a time consuming and often painful process. The skin is biopsied, frozen then viewed under a scanning confocal microscope. This process is repeated a number of times if necessary. My research seeks to define a non-invasive means of imaging the skin deeper than the confocal microscope with and better accuracy through measurement of the Doppler shift of the skin due to thermal expansion. A heating laser will be applied to an area while a scanning laser system images the area. Dissimilar materials exhibit different expansion properties and thus different changes in their index of refraction. These changes can be detected by comparing the reflected beam from the scanner to its reference
For more information, contact Jason Kellicker
Optical Science Laboratory
This research project is part of the work at the Optical Science Laboratory of Chuck DiMarzio in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University. For other projects see Optical Science Lab Research Page.