Irving J. Bigio, Ph.D.

Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, Biomedical Engineering
Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Biomedical Optics Laboratory

Ph.D., Physics, University of Michigan
Curriculum Vitae

Phone: (617) 358-1987; Fax: (617) 358-0389
Email: bigio@bu.edu
Office: ERB 233; Office hours: By appointment

Recently inducted into AIMBE “for outstanding contributions advancing basic theory and practice in biomedical optics, including optical biopsy, interstitial laser thermotherapy, and optical pharmacokinetics”.

Research Interests

• Medical applications of optics, lasers and spectroscopy
• Biomedical Optics and Biophotonics
• Biomolecular dynamics
• Applied spectroscopy, especially to biomedical problems
• Nonlinear optics, quantum electronics and laser physics

Current Research

The core theme of biomedical optics/photonics is minimally invasive optical diagnostics and therapeutics. The current national trend in health care is a growing emphasis on preventive medicine, early diagnosis, reduced invasiveness of procedures, outpatient procedures – in short, an overall reduction in the cost of providing health care. Minimally invasive techniques address such aims in addition to providing significant patient benefits. Current developments in optical technologies are rapidly increasing the technical options available. Moreover, the ongoing growth in use of endoscopes and laparoscopes in medicine makes this theme very timely. Some components of Dr. Bigio’s current research:

• Advanced spectroscopic technologies for tissue diagnosis
• Noninvasive measurement of drug concentrations in tissue
• Interstitial laser thermotherapy and photodynamic therapy
• Computational methods for modeling optical transport in tissue
• Multi-capability endoscopic and laparoscopic instruments

Selected Recent Publications

MRS Keshtgar, DW Chicken, MR Austwick, SK Somasundaram, CA Mosse, Y Zhu, IJ Bigio, SG Bown “Optical scanning for rapid intraoperative diagnosis of sentinel node metastases in breast cancer” British Journal of Surgery. 97 7095. (June 2010)

CS Mulvey, CA Sherwood and IJ Bigio “Wavelength-dependent backscattering measurements for quantitative real-time monitoring of apoptosis in living cells” J. Biomedical Optics. 14 (6), 064013. PMC2794414 (November 2009)

Y Zhu, T Fearn, G Mackenzie, Ben Clark, JM Dunn, IJ. Bigio, SG Bown, LB Lovat “Elastic scattering spectroscopy for detection of cancer risk in Barrett’s oesophagus: experimental and clinical validation of error removal by orthogonal subtraction (EROS) for increasing the accuracy” J. Biomed. Opt. 14 (4), 040504. PMC2849300 (August 2009)

Invited review: Irving J Bigio and Stephen G. Bown “Spectroscopic Sensing of Cancer and Cancer Chemotherapy, current status of translational research” Cancer Biology and Therapy. 3 (3), 259-267. (2004)

Roberto Reif, Mei Wang, Shailendra Joshi, Ousama Aamar and Irving J Bigio “Optical method for real-time monitoring of drug concentrations facilitates the development of novel methods for drug delivery to brain tissue” J Biomedical Optics. 12 (3), 034036. (May/June 2007)

Roberto Reif, Ousama A’Amar and Irving J. Bigio “An analytical model of light reflectance for extraction of the optical properties in small volumes of turbid media” Applied Optics. 46, 7317-7328. (October 2007)

Invited paper: C.S. Mulvey, A.L. Curtis, S.K. Singh and I.J. Bigio “Elastic scattering spectroscopy as a diagnostic tool for apoptosis in cell cultures”  IEEE J. Select. Topics in Quant. Electron. 13, 1663-1670. (October 2007)

R. Reif, M.S. Amorosino, K.W. Calabro, O. Aamar, S.K. Singh and I.J. Bigio “Analysis of changes in reflectance measurements on biological tissues subjected to different probe pressures” J. Biomed. Opt. Letters. 13, 010502-1–3. (January/February 2008)

R. Georgescu, D. Khismatulin, R.G. Holt, J.L. Castagner and I.J. Bigio “Design of a system to measure light scattering from individual cells excited by an acoustic wave” Optics Express. 16, 3496-3503. (2008)