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MaryAnn Fitzmaurice
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Assistant Professor of Pathology |
Dr. Fitzmaurice’s research is in the development of new optical (fluorescence, diffuse reflectance, light scattering and Raman spectroscopy) techniques and devices for real-time in vivo diagnosis and imaging of disease, particularly cancer, in humans. This includes research in two related areas: 1) development of new techniques and instrumentation to exploit the endogenous optical properties of tissue to render a disease diagnosis and 2) development of novel exogenous optical probes for molecular-based disease imaging. In the first case, diagnostic optical spectroscopy, optical parameters are extracted from spectra of normal and diseased tissue and then algorithms developed to render a disease diagnosis. This requires an understanding of the fundamental properties of normal and diseased tissues (biochemical and morphologic) that define their interaction with light (absorption, scattering, etc.) and development of techniques to deconvolve and model the optical spectra using, for example, diffusion or photon migration theory. This research has culminated in the production of prototype clinical Raman and tri-modal (fluorescence, reflectance and light scattering) spectroscopy systems, which have undergone pilot studies for the real time diagnosis of breast cancer and vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque in vivo in human subjects. In the second case, optical imaging, Dr. Fitzmaurice is applying the knowledge gained in her diagnostic spectroscopy studies to the development of novel nanoparticle-based optical probes for molecular imaging of cancer. In this research, prototype biocompatible nanoparticles with optical properties optimized for in vivo imaging in humans are synthesized and conjugated to antibodies to selected cancer markers for molecular targeting. Prototype probes are in development for near infrared (NIR) fluorescence imaging, dual modality fluorescence-magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging. This research currently focuses on imaging of Her-2 oncoprotein overexpression in breast cancer. However, the nanoparticle probes in development are a platform technology that can be applied to in vivo imaging of other cancer markers and other non-cancer diseases.