Contact Information
Department of Physics525 Northwestern Avenue
West Lafayette, IN
47907-2036
Map and Directions
Telephone:
(765) 494-2970
Fax:
(765) 494-0706
David Koltick
Purdue University
"Applying Nuclear and Particle Physics to Diagnose Cancer"
Thursday October 04, 2012
4:00pm 203
Refreshments are served at 3:30 p.m. in Physics room 242
What if you could produce a 3-dimensional elemental map of the human body? The possibility of such technology does exist! Associated particle neutron elemental imaging (API) for in vivo and in vitro diagnostic analysis is a potential technology to measure elemental disease signatures. API can produce 3-dimensional elemental images with spatial resolution as small as 1-mm. Surprisingly, even though the human body is composed of molecules with billions of atoms, something as simple as elemental imbalance can measure disease presence. The use of API technology to diagnose disease is based on measured concentrations of many signature elements having large differences between normal and diseased tissues ranging as large as 50% to more than 500%. For cancer, anomalous elemental concentrations have been observed for breast, liver, colon, kidney, lung and prostate. In principle, in vivo observation of these anomalies would provide a diagnostic tool for disease presence. In addition, investigation into the pathways underlying these anomalous elemental concentrations may provide new understanding and possible novel therapeutic targets.