Histopathology is the initial stage for the diagnosis of cancer and provides useful information on the adequacy of surgical resection of cancerous tissue. The standard histopathology methods require physical sectioning of the tissue, which takes more than a day to complete and imposes a delay between the surgery and the histopathology results. Other techniques, such as frozen section and nonlinear microscopy, have limited usage, are difficult to implement, or require expensive equipment. Our group is investigating novel alternative methods to facilitate pathology. I will be designing an ultraviolet (UV) microscopy setup to capture images from breast tissue stained with florescent dyes. Compared to current methods, UV fluorescence imaging may prove to be a fast, low cost and easy to implement approach to histopathology.

I have always been passionate about medical technology and taking Applications of Electromagnetism piqued my interest in optics and photonics. Seeking to combine my passions, I found the research in the Biomedical Optical Imaging and Biophotonics Group inspiring, and now, I am looking forward to building my own imaging microscope, testing it on real clinical cases, and seeing its impact on the medical world.