Detail Project and Funding

Abstract: The main goal of this project is the study and development of highly-advanced fiber-optic sensors that rely on enhancement cavities for direct detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) ultimately without using biological reporters. CTCs are present in the peripheral blood (PB) of patients showing localized malignant neoplasm. They represent an important biomarker with great potential for the clinical approach of several cancer diseases.CTCs may serve themselves as a terapeutic target in a personalized treatment planning.
In fact, our sensors would be extremely compact and minimally-invasive with in-vivo and real-time operation to select and quantify CTCs.
Recently, a proper combination of plamonic nanotechnolgies and label-free, advanced optical analysis techniques, based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and in-fiber grating sensors, have been proposed as an innovation step over conventional methods (Wang XU et Al. Cancer Res 71:1526-1532, 2011) aimed at detection of rare biomolecules.

INO’s Experiments/Theoretical Study correlated:
Surface-plasmon resonance sensing with cavity-enhanced methods
Evanescent-wave sensing and spectroscopy

The Scientific Results:
1) Phase-shift cavity ring-down spectroscopy on a microsphere resonator by Rayleigh backscattering
2) Cavity Ring Down Spectroscopy by using a liquid sphere as a micro resonator

3) Optical fiber sensors for radiation dosimetry
4) Detecting ionizing radiation with optical fibers down to biomedical doses
5) Cavity enhanced spectroscopy on silica microsphere resonators
6) Cavity enhanced spectroscopy and sensing
7) Detection of ionizing radiation by intrinsic optical fiber
sensors: preliminary results
8) Absolute absorption cross-section measurement of a submonolayer film on a silica microresonator
9) Radiation dosimetry with fiber Bragg gratings
10) Enhanced nanoparticle detection with liquid droplet resonators
11) Rivelazione di radiazioni ionizzanti mediante sensori intrinseci in fibra ottica
12) Detection of chemicals using a novel fiber-optic sensor element built in fiber loop ring-resonators
13) Direct Sensing in Liquids Using Whispering-Gallery-Mode Droplet Resonators
14) Ionizing radiation sensing with optical fiber resonators
15) Pushing the limits of precise spectroscopic sensing
16) Ionizing Radiation Detectors Based on Ge-Doped Optical Fibers Inserted in Resonant Cavities