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Biomedical Optics
- Biomedical Spectroscopy Laboratory
Prof. Andrew Berger 
The Biomedical Spectroscopy Laboratory conducts experiments
in the growing field of biomedical optics. This group
focuses on two main areas:
Near infrared spectroscopy of cerebral activity.
Here the goal is to track cerebral hemodynamics for
functional monitoring. Prof. Berger's present contribution
is on the fundamental level, trying to reduce remove
competing sources of biological “noise”
in the signals.
Raman spectroscopy of biological materials.
The general goal is to measure levels of important chemicals
in biofluids (e.g. blood serum), single cells (e.g.
immune cells), and other relevant samples (e.g. oral
plaque).
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- Biosensors, Nonlinear Optical Microscopes
Prof. Robert Boyd
Dr. Boyd is interested in the development of photonic
biosensors based on the idea of enhanced sensitivity
through use of high-Q disk and ring resonators.The primary
research venture in this area is the design
of optical biosensors. Prof. Boyd's technique
is to fabricate optical resonators that can be exposed
to the presence of biological pathogens. The presence
of a pathogen on the active area of the sensor can lead
to an increased optical absorption. For a high-finesse
optical resonator, even the small absorption resulting
from the presence of several tens of biological molecules
can produce a large change in the power circulating
within the resonator. Fabrication in glass, in gallium
arsenide, or and polymers are being pursued as parallel
efforts.
Another of Dr. Boyd's areas of interest are the development
of new microscopic methods based on nonlinear optical
techniques, including the design of nonlinear
optical microscopes with increased sensitivity
for detecting weak phase objects.
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- Image Restoration, Super-Resolution of
Retinal Images
Prof. Jim Fienup
The Phase Retrieval
and Imaging Science Group conducts research into obtaining
improved performance in imaging systems and measuring
wavefronts by computational means, for a variety of
imaging modalities. Current projects include removal
of out-of-plane artifacts from 3-D fluorescence microscopy
and super-resolution of in vivo images
of the human retina using structured illumination and
image restoration.
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- Photodynamic Therapy, Fluorescence Imaging
of Gene Expression
Prof. Tom Foster 
The University of Rochester Medical Center houses the
laboratories of Prof. Foster's group, who investigate
a number of biomedical optics problems related to photodynamic
therapy of cancer and the tumor microenvironment.
Some current projects include fluorescence and reflectance
spectroscopic monitoring of skin cancer responses to
PDT, imaging of fluorescent reporters
of PDT-induced gene activation, light scattering from
cells and tissue, optical properties of human cancer,
and the development of mathematical models of photodynamic
processes and dosimetry. The research is interdisciplinary
and highly collaborative.
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- Virus Detection, Study of Transmembrane
Proteins
Prof. Lukas Novotny 
His nano-optics group studies transmembrane
proteins using single molecule spectroscopy.
They are using single-pair FRET measurements to track
conformational changes in single AE1 membrane proteins.
Furthermore, the group is developing a chip-scale device
for the optical presorting of sub-micron particles such
as viruses and is applying optical
antennas for the identification and visualization of
single membrane proteins.
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©2007 University of Rochester
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