Researchers at the University of Illinois have made numerous discoveries in bioimaging, including clinical ultrasound therapy (brain surgery), sonograms, and blood flow quantification. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been developed in large part by University of Illinois researchers into a clinically useful tool in developmental biology, as an aid for surgery and cardiovascular imaging, and as an early cancer detection tool. Other forms of optical imaging including near-infrared spectroscopy and event-related optical imaging have also been developed here as real-time imaging methods that can be used to track brain changes that accompany different cognitive processes. A multitude of other imaging technologies are also being developed and refined at the Beckman Institute including bioacoustics, structural MRI, fMRI, optical chemical imaging, advanced microscopy techniques, event-related brain potentials, and transcranial magnetic imaging.
The near-term future plan for Bioimaging research plan includes:
- Securing federally funded equipment grants to further develop the imaging tools available for the bioimaging community
- Continuing the development of human and non-human multi-modal imaging capabilities to capitalize on the unique advantages of particular imaging modalities
- Developing leading-edge methods for automated retrieval, and advanced security, of medical images from databases based quantitative features of the images
- Developing imaging capabilities that can not only detect pathologies, but also classifies and diagnoses the pathologies
- Expanding our group of imaging scientists with our growing cadre of imaging resources