Research Overview

The Biophotonics Lab at Vanderbilt University works closely with the School of Medicine and the College of Arts and Science. In this way, fundamental discovery and research complements our clinical research and commercial translation of optical technologies to improve patient care. Ongoing research projects are structured as follows:

Clinical Photonics - Our center develops optical techniques for surgical guidance and diagnosis. Our work aims to Guide surgeries and therapies in order to differentiate between the target tissue that needs to be removed and all other tissues. Diagnosis of disease, on the other hand, focuses on not only recognizing the presence of non-normal conditions but also on differentially diagnosing what benign or malignant condition is present.

Neurophotonics -  Our labs have pioneered the application of pulsed infrared lasers for the activation of neural tissues in a damage free, artifact free, contact free way. Based on this discovery, we have numerous ongoing projects that are focused on what we call infrared neural stimulation. These projects span from the fundamental discovery of what makes INS work to the clinical translation of this technique in human nerves in vivo.

Multiscale Photonics - At the VBC, we are building and developing optical tool at various scales. The BioMIID program builds and makes optical microscopy techniques available to researchers across Vanderbilt’s campus. Other efforts include investigating nanophotonics and microfluidic platforms.