Stephen Boppart
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Biomedical Engineering
Most medical imaging either requires injecting a dye or stops at the body's surface. Light-based imaging offers a third path: shine harmless light into tissue, measure how it scatters, bends, or re-emits, and reconstruct what is inside from the tissue's own optical signals, with no added contrast agent.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Engineering
- Topics
optical coherence tomography
otitis media
middle ear effusion
- Grants
- 5 known grants, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Test whether adding optical coherence tomography, a light-based imaging method that sees behind the eardrum, to standard pneumatic otoscopy improves diagnostic accuracy and reduces antibiotic prescriptions in children presenting to primary care with ear pain or suspected otitis media.
- Test whether optical coherence tomography added to otoscopy and tympanometry reduces the need for surgery in children referred to pediatric otolaryngology for chronic otitis media with effusion.
- Develop image-processing and machine learning algorithms that automatically identify middle ear effusions and bacterial biofilms in optical coherence tomography images to support clinical decisions.
- Establish B-mode and M-mode optical coherence tomography image features that predict whether a middle ear effusion will resolve or persist over time.
- Identify label-free optical biomarkers at subcellular and cellular scales that signal broader disease processes, using the Center's multimodal and nonlinear imaging platforms.
- Build computational imaging algorithms that extend imaging depth and performance in thick tissue, and engineer beam delivery systems that widen the range of tissues these optical modalities can reach.
- Apply artificial intelligence to tissue sections in a digital pathology platform using intrinsic, stain-free contrast to extract quantitative biomarkers.
More about the research
Work here develops that family of label-free optical technologies, from laser systems and reconstruction algorithms to handheld probes, and pushes them directly into clinics, operating rooms, and pediatric exam rooms where they can change what a doctor decides to do.
Why it matters
Better imaging of the middle ear could spare children unnecessary antibiotics and ear surgery while catching infections that need treatment, addressing a condition affecting most children and costing billions annually. More broadly, label-free optical instruments that need no injected dye can move into human studies faster and could improve how clinicians detect and monitor cancer and neurodegenerative disease at the bedside.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Susan Voss
Smith College, MA·Biomedical Engineering
Expand and update the online wideband acoustic immittance database, now over 9,900 subjects from 41 studies, to define normal measurements and show how specific middle-ear diseases change them.
Ipek Oguz
Vanderbilt University, TN·Biomedical Engineering
Develop custom handheld spectrally encoded coherence tomography and reflectometry (SECTR) hardware, an eye-imaging system combining OCT and surface reflectance, for point-of-care imaging of infant eyes.
Kristin Ray
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test in a randomized trial whether tele-otoscope-enabled primary care telemedicine for pediatric acute respiratory tract infections reduces antibiotic receipt among children under two years old, including those with at least one prior episode of acute otitis media.
The school
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: 41 labs on PI Pages, $907M a year on research, 870 research doctorates a year.
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