Facilities
The facilities/technologies developed by the group include:
- Hybrid fluorescence and photo-acoustic microscopy, which measures and characterizes specific molecular processes, and thus answers can be given in particular biological questions concerning disease development, cell function, gene expression and drug delivery. Similar approaches are also being implemented by the group towards mescopic and microscopic tomographic imaging by employing diverse aproaches.
- Adaptive optics set up to develop novel techniques for modulating and shaping the beam wavefront in order to improve the penetration depth and the imaging capabilities at biological samples.
- Optical Projection Tomography (OPT) and Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM) to image in-vivo at the sub mm range, with enhanced throughput when combined with Microfluidic devices. In the mesoscopic scale the group has developed:
- Polarization Sensitive Optical Computed Tomography (POp-CT) to enable imaging of large moderately scattering media, which has been exploited in the quantification of radiotherapy doses and in the detection and characterization of malignant skin lesions. For the testing and optimization of these methods the group has developed the technology for manufacturing:
- 3D Realistic geometry, inhomogeneous phantoms (3D-TruePhantom) by exploiting 3d printing and moulding of realistic anatomical data.
- 3D imaging system for melanocytic skin lesion evaluation to enable for information from a custom build 3D scanner to be processed and analyzed towards an automatic early detection and classification of malignant skin legions.
Lab space
The group occupies two (2) rooms in the basement of the IMBB building (A059 and A060). Room A059 hosts the FMT and Optical-CT systems while room A060 is the base for the OPT-SPIM system, which will host and be upgraded with the adaptive optics setup. The hybrid photoacoustic-fluorescence microscope has been installed in the basement of STEP-C building room C007 along with the adaptive optics set up. The group also occupies two (2) offices in the STEP-C building, rooms Γ201 and Γ207, with 7 people capacity.