BOHEMIA, NY - Advanced BioPhotonics has entered into a pilot site agreement with Yale University School of Medicine’s Department of Surgery to investigate the company’s dynamic infrared imaging (DIRI) technology in mapping vascular perforator vessels and post-operative monitoring of flap viability in reconstructive breast surgery. DIRI involves the acquisition of hundreds to thousands of consecutive thermal images, deriving information from the modulation of temperature and of thermal spatial distribution of small sub-areas.
Yale researchers will use the company’s BioScanIR System, a functional medical imaging modality that provides a fast, non-invasive, radiation-free method for detecting diseases and conditions that affect blood perfusion. The heat-sensitive technology for perforator vessel localization may provide faster and more accurate vascular assessment, according to Denis O’Connor, CEO of Advanced BioPhotonics.
“Every time there is body activity, there is photonic activity” he said. “We look at the 6- to 8-µm wavelength and the 1- to 2-Hz range.”
The quantum well infrared photodetector technology used in the system was originally developed for the Department of Defense’s Ballistic Missile Defense Initiative. Advanced BioPhotonics owns an exclusive, worldwide license to use the technology for biomedical applications, based on the work of Michael Anbar at the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
“The real medical benefit is the high dynamic frame rate of 400 frames/sec,” O’Connor said. “The physician merely has to scan the patient for 20 sec, look at the temperature variations and look at the spectrum of photonic activity. Now we can show not only an important clinical outcome but an economic benefit.”
Clinical applications of the BioScanIR System include monitoring a patient’s response to cancer drug therapy, monitoring intervention in diabetic-driven peripheral vascular disease, identifying perforator vessels during pre-surgical planning and assessing post-operative perfusion of pedicle flaps following reconstructive surgery such as that of the breast, mapping of functional cortex in patients undergoing tumor surgery and determining cardiac bypass graft patency and perfusion of the myocardium in cardiac surgery. Eventually, Advanced BioPhotonics expects to demonstrate the efficacy of the procedure for breast, abdomen, and burn reconstruction.