Alba Alfonso-Garcia
University of California-Davis, CA·Biomedical Engineering
Colonoscopy is the main defense against colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, but it relies on what the eye can see. Subtle changes in a lesion's chemistry and structure can be missed, and more than 85% of cancers found after a colonoscopy trace back to a lesion that was overlooked or only partly removed.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Engineering
- Topics
fluorescence lifetime imaging
FLIm
autofluorescence
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2030
What they work on
- Build a database of in vivo fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIm) signatures from colorectal lesions in 200 patients undergoing routine colonoscopy, correlating each label-free autofluorescence signature with histopathology to define markers of lesion type.
- Develop user-friendly algorithms that analyze and visualize FLIm data rapidly enough for display during a live colonoscopy procedure.
- Evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of FLIm for identifying and staging lesions from benign polyps to malignant tumors, using machine learning classifiers trained on the patient database.
- Test the hypothesis that fluorescence lifetime signals reflect biochemical changes of inflammation and carcinogenesis, by comparing tissue composition and metabolic signatures across lesion stages.
More about the research
This project adds a chemical sense to the procedure, so that a clinician sees not just the shape of a growth but something about what it is made of.
Why it matters
Missed and incompletely removed lesions account for most colorectal cancers diagnosed after a colonoscopy. A label-free imaging add-on that flags suspicious tissue by its chemistry during the exam could help endoscopists decide what to biopsy or remove and how completely, potentially improving early detection and reducing colorectal cancer incidence and deaths.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
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Jason Moore
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Biomedical Engineering
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Ronald Stanley
Missouri University of Science and Technology, MO·Engineering
Build an online platform with the International Skin Imaging Collaborative (ISIC) where experts worldwide annotate, segment and validate critical structures in dermoscopic skin lesion images.
The school
University of California-Davis: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.0B a year on research, 647 research doctorates a year.
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