Ciencia-Física

Lihong Wang, PhD, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, together with his team have developed a new technology called time-reversed adapted-perturbation (TRAP) optical focusing, which sends guiding light into tissue to seek movement.

This non-invasive technique is of benefit in both imaging and therapy according to the researchers. By combining ultrasound and light absorption this new technology produces live images of biological tissues several inches below the skin. Therefore active cancers could be viewed in detail never seen before which would enable more accurate assessments.

The technology sends guiding light into tissue to seek movement. The light that has traversed stationary tissue appears differently than light that has moved through something moving, such as blood. By taking two successive images, they can subtract the light through stationary tissue, retaining only the scattered light due to motion. Then, they send that light back to its original source via a process called time-reversal so that it becomes focused once back in the tissue.

Published in Nature Photonics Advance Online Edition the research can be seen here - http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2014.251.html