OPTIMISE · Optical Platform for Therapy and diagnostic Imaging in Minimally Invasive Surgical Endoscopy

With the clinical drive for earlier detection of disease and minimally invasive treatment, there is a paradigm shift of imaging and therapy towards in vivo, in situ surgery. One major effort towards this goal is the translation of emerging optical diagnostic imaging and therapy techniques into minimally invasive surgery (MIS) and cancer screening. This proposal will develop a novel multimodal platform that can be deployed in flexible endoscopy and robotic assisted MIS devices. This is timely in that recently there have been advances in the optical detection of diseased tissue states and also in nanotechnology that allows photothermal therapies based on focused optical energy delivery to gold nanoparticles. The clinical integration of these two strands of research offers significant promise for optical adjuvant cancer therapies and for image-guided tissue fusion, but the study of the therapeutic effect of these techniques has been limited due to the lack of a common platform for image-guided optical follow-up of the therapy. The purpose of this proposal is to develop a programmable light source for simultaneous multimodal screening and image-guided nanoparticle-mediated thermal therapy. The platform will be validated by studying of diseases of the colon to enable detection and treatment of flat polyps that may develop into invasive cancers. As a young lecturer, Dr Elson has extensive multidisciplinary experience in laser technology, biophotonics, optical imaging, microscope technique development, minimally invasive surgery and robotic-assisted surgery. He will bring together new technology with a mix of engineering, biochemistry and biophotonics skills. The proposed work will be carried out in state-of-the-art facilities with access to the clinic for translation.