Biomedical Optics Research Group

Shedding Diffuse Light on Disease

Welcome to the homepage of the Biomedical Optics Research Group at Northeastern University. Our laboratory PI is Professor Mark Niedre. Our group studies the application of optical engineering to biomedicine. Our research is highly inter-disciplinary and requires the integration of optical engineering, biology, electrical engineering, and signal processing.

Specifically, we study the application of diffuse light to fluorescently detect circulating cells directly in the bloodstream. Our goal is to help detect rare cancerous cells that help facilitate the spreading of cancer. We ultimately hope to help clinicians detect cancer faster.

Designing a tethered DiFC instrument for detecting fluorescent cancer cells in awake mice

Fluorescently labeling and detecting cancer cells directly in vivo

DiFC signal processing algorithm development

Diffuse in vivo Flow Cytometry

Hematogenous metastasis is responsible for the majority of cancer related deaths. As such, enumeration and molecular profiling of CTCs is of great interest in pre-clinical and clinical cancer research. The goal of this research is to use diffuse light to detect and count extremely rare CTCs directly in the bloodstream without having to draw blood samples. We probe large, superficial blood vessels and can detect very low abundance fluorescently-labeled cells.

Contact

04/12/22 BOSTON, MA- Mark Niedre, second from left and center, and his students, (from front) Jane Lee, Amber Williams, Fernando Ivich, Josh Pace and Max Kellish pose for a portrait outside Niedre’s lab in the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering building on Northeastern’s Boston campus on Tuesday, April 13, 2022. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University

niedrelab@outlook.com

X: @NUBioE1