Public lecture: Using light to make cancer “sing”
A pioneer in the field of biomedical optoacoustics will give a public lecture at the University of Prince Edward Island about how doctors are using light to better detect breast cancer. The lecture by Dr. Alexander Oraevsky begins at 7 pm on Wednesday, August 7 in room 242 of UPEI's Don and Marion McDougall Hall.
Dr. Oraevsky is the chief technology officer at TomoWave Labs and is an adjunct professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Houston. His lecture-titled 'New imaging technology uses light to make cancer ‘sing' to the doctor'-discusses emerging technology that replaces harmful radiation with light and sound.
The drawbacks of the current breast cancer detection technique, mammography, are many: it uses uncomfortable compression; it misses 20 per cent of cancerous tumours in elderly women; it cannot visualize tumours in the breasts of young women; it cannot tell the difference between a cancerous and non-cancerous tumour, exposing some patients to unnecessary surgery; finally, mammography exposes patients to harmful ionizing radiation.
Dr. Oraevsky will discuss new imaging technology that uses red light instead of ionizing radiation. The light is converted into sound within the tumour. This causes the tumour to produce a sound, which can be detected by a doctor using a special array of detectors to determine the tumour location and its medical condition. This technology takes advantage of the fact that aggressive cancers develop their own system of microscopic blood vessels to support rapid growth. The red light can be absorbed in cancerous tumours, producing signals that can be reliably detected by doctors.
'Based on early clinical results, optoacoustic imaging is positioned to be a significant enhancement of breast ultrasound and potentially a future alternative to (x-ray) mammography and MRI scans,' said Dr. Bill Whelan, an optoacoustics researcher in the departments of physics and biomedical sciences at UPEI.
Dr. Oraevsky is the recipient of multiple research awards advancing biomedical applications of the optoacoustic-imaging sensing and monitoring. He is the primary inventor of 17 patents, has published five book chapters, and more than 200 scientific papers dealing with novel laser technologies applicable in biology and medicine.
For more information about Dr. Oraevsky's visit to UPEI, or to organize a time to meet with him, please contact Dr. Bill Whelan, Department of Physics at 566-0419, wwhelan@upei.ca.
