Although optical molecular imaging has a great potential to provide new insights into biological research and accelerate the propagation of new knowledge towards pre-clinical and clinical stages, the main barriers in its widespread use have been its low resolution and accuracy. For more than a decade, our group has been spending extensive effort to develop novel and cutting-edge optical imaging techniques to improve its resolution and quantitative accuracy. The importance of in vivo optical imaging lies in the advent of molecular optical probes that can interrogate molecular events and monitor disease progression, therapeutic efficay, and molecular processes such as proliferation, apoptosis, and angiogenesis. Some of these probes are already in clinical trials and quantitative optical imaging will be the key for development and testing of new probes and utilization of their full potential in clinical setting. The systems that are developed in our lab operates either in absorption, fluorescence, or bioluminescence mode or in combination of those. These systems focus on both preclinical and clinical imaging and mostly utilize multi-modality approach. Naturally, our resarch is highly interdisciplinary and we have active collaborations with a wide range of faculty from variety of departments. Please explore our lab in more detail to learn about our specific research projects and team members.
Gultekin Gulsen (P.I.)