Emerging Technology and Best Practices Seminar Series

Friday, November 30, 2007
Optical Imaging for Medicine and Biology: Applications in Cancer Detection
8:00AM-4:00PM, Cocktail Hour 4:00-5:00PM
The Photonics Center
8 Saint Mary's Street, 9th Floor
Boston, MA 02215

Host:
Professor Jerome Mertz, Department of Biomedical Engineering

Boston University
College of Engineering
44 Cummington Street
Boston, MA 02215

Emerging Technology and Best Practices Seminar Series

Short Biography of Max Diem, Ph.D., Professor

                                                                 
Laboratory for Spectral Diagnoses
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
316 Hurtig Hall
tel: 617.373.2922
fax: 617.373.7773
Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115                                email: m.diem@neu.edu

Physical and Biophysical Chemistry, Bio-Imaging

Education
1970 Vordiplom (BS) Universität Karlsruhe, Germany

1976 PhD., University of Toledo, Toledo, OH

1976-78 Postdoc, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

Honors & Awards
2006 Society for Applied Spectroscopy (SAS) National Tour Speaker

2000 Lester W. Strock Award, SAS, for outstanding work in vibrational spectroscopy

Research Interests
The research in Prof. Diem’s laboratory is centered on the development of optical methods for medical diagnosis, in particular for medical imaging. In contrast to standard pathology, where stained cells and tissues are examined visually under a microscope, we measure changes in cellular composition using molecular fingerprint techniques, such as infrared and Raman micro-spectroscopy. The research being carried out is divided into two major areas. In our work on tissue diagnostics, we have developed methods for the detection and identification of secondary (metastatic) tumors in lymph nodes. We are working on producing instrumentation and software that can analyze lymph node sections in the operating room, and provide the surgeon with an objective diagnosis of the spread of disease.

The second major research area is the detection of cellular abnormality in a sample of exfoliated cervical, urothelial or buccal cells.  We can distinguish cell types in such samples by the same optical measurements used for tissue diagnostics, and sophisticated multivariate statistical methods. This work opens the possibilities of designing systems for cancer screening.

Selected Recent Publications

• C.Matthäus, M.Miljkovic, M.Romeo, S.Boydston-White and M.Diem, “Raman and Infrared Micro-spectral Imaging of Mitotic Cells”, (2006) Appl.Spectrosc., 60(1), 1-8
• S.Boydston-White, M.Romeo, T.Chernenko, A.Regina, M.Miljkovic and M.Diem, "Cell-cycle-dependent variations in FTIR micro-spectra of single proliferating HeLa cells: Principal component and artificial neural network analysis", (2006) Biochimica et Biophysica Acta,  1758,  908–914
• M.Romeo, B.Mohlenhoff, M.Jennings and M.Diem, “Infrared micro-spectroscopic studies of epithelial cells”, (2006) Biochimica et Biophysica Acta,1758,  915–922
• M.Romeo,  B.Mohlenhoff and M.Diem “Infrared Micro-Spectroscopy of Human Cells: Causes for the Spectral Variance of Oral Mucosa (Buccal) Cells”, (2006) Vibrational Spectrosc., 42, 9-14
• P.Lasch, M.Diem, W.Hänsch and D.Naumann, “Artificial Neural Networks as Supervised Techniques for FT-IR Microspectroscopic Imaging”, (2007) J.Chemometrics, 20(5),  209-220
• C.Matthäus, T.Chernenko, J.Newmark, C.Warner and M. Diem "Label-free detection of mitochondrial distribution in cells by nonresonant Raman Micro-Spectroscopy" (2007), Biophys.J., 93, 668-673

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