Possible light leak turned out to be a real effect

“At first, we thought it must be a light leak,” Mahadevan-Jansen said. When they kept getting the strong signal with several different samples, however, they realized that the effect was real.

Based on this success, Mahadevan-Jansen brought biomedical engineering graduate students Constantine Paras and Matthew Keller on board.

The expanded research team submitted an experimental protocol to Vanderbilt’s Institutional Review Board, which must approve all experiments involving animals or people. When it was approved, they gained access to human thyroid and parathyroid tissue.

“The parathyroid tissue from those first dozen patients kept saturating the Raman spectrometer so we had to keep reducing the laser’s intensity,” Mahadevan-Jansen recalled. “Finally, I realized that the instrument was saturating because the tissue was fluorescing.”

When she confirmed that this was happening, the engineer realized that they didn’t need the Raman spectroscope. All they needed was a light source in the near infrared and the right kind of near infrared detectors.

Cause of fluorescence remains a mystery

“We still haven’t figured out the source of the fluorescence, but that doesn’t stand in the way of using this effect to improve the effectiveness of parathyroid surgeries and reduce the damage done to the parathyroid in other endocrine surgeries,” Mahadevan-Jansen said.

Meanwhile, White is finishing up her final year as a resident in general surgery.  She intends to make endocrine surgery a major part of her practice, so she could be one of the first surgeons whose patients will benefit from the discovery that resulted from her curiosity and initiative as a first-year intern.

Contact:
David Salisbury, (615) 322-NEWS
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