Photodetectors Bring Enhanced Imaging to the Surgical Suite

Friday, February 01 2008

Advanced BioPhotonics (Bohemia, NY), which owns the exclusive worldwide license for using quantum-well infrared photodetector (QWIP) technology in biomedical imaging applications, developed a QWIP-based device called the BioScanIR® that can be used in procedures in which Doppler ultrasound and other imaging techniques traditionally have been used.

The QWIP was a groundbreaking technology that sprang from the collaboration of many agencies, including NASA and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). MDA funding was instrumental in the early development of the QWIP at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory; the agency’s main interest was in how well the QWIP could detect missiles while in non-boost phase. In addition, Advanced BioPhotonics received a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to develop an integrated portable infrared camera system that could meet MDA’s booster-typing needs as well as advance the next innovations in infrared medical imaging.

How it Works

The highly sensitive, gallium arsenide QWIP detector can “see” the radiation range at which most room-temperature objects emit energy. This type of detector can pick out the warm silhouette of a living being in a room obscured by smoke, or the signatures of different chemicals in the atmosphere of a distant planet. Here on Earth, QWIP technology has found a home in the medical domain, in the expanding field of infrared imaging.

For blood perfusion studies, BioScanIR offers advantages over techniques such as CT, PET, and functional MRI (fMRI), whose limitations include exposure to ionizing radiation, lack of timely feedback, psychological limitations such as claustrophobia in the use of MRI, and high expense.

Surgery is a highly skilled and visual business, and reconnecting blood vessels is a lot tougher than just wielding a needle and thread. The leakage of small blood vessels can easily go unnoticed in the obscuring matrix of tissue, and surgeons must spend a good deal of time confirming their handiwork before they decide to close up. In this instance, QWIP technology can provide a highly resolved picture of what the surgeon can’t see with the naked eye. For breast reconstructive surgeries, doctors have used the BioScanIR to detect the presence of “feeder” or perforator vessels that nourish and provide oxygen to tissue.