Research Interests for Nimmi Ramanujam

Innovating on optical strategies to peer into the biological landscape of thick tissues. Technologies being developed in her lab leverage principles of optical spectroscopy, optical sectioning microscopy, and molecular imaging. Her research group is developing and applying these optically based tools for three problems in cancer: cancer screening in resource-limited settings, intra-operative margin assessment to detect residual disease during cancer surgery, and visualizing tumor hypoxia and metabolism in the context of cancer therapy and drug discovery. Prof. Ramanujam is leading a multi-disciplinary effort to translate these technologies to clinical applications in the breast, and cervix.

Representative Publications

1. Chang VTC, Cartwright PS, Bean SM, Palmer GM, Bentley RC, Ramanujam N., Quantitative physiology of the precancerous cervix in vivo via optical spectroscopy, Neoplasia, vol. 11 no. 4 (2009), pp. 325-332
2. J. Q. Brown and L. G. Wilke and J. Geradts and S. A. Kennedy and G. M. Palmer and N. Ramanujam, Quantitative Optical Spectroscopy: A Robust Tool for Direct Measurement of Breast Cancer Vascular Oxygenation and Total Hemoglobin Content In vivo, Cancer Research, vol. 69 no. 7 (April, 2009), pp. 2919 -- 2926, ISSN 0008-5472 [abs]
3. K. Vishwanath and D. Klein and K. Chang and T. Schroeder and M. W. Dewhirst and N. Ramanujam, Quantitative optical spectroscopy can identify long-term local tumor control in irradiated murine head and neck xenografts, Journal Of Biomedical Optics, vol. 14 no. 5 (September, 2009), ISSN 1083-3668 [abs]
4. L. G. Wilke and J. Q. Brown and T. M. Bydlon and S. A. Kennedy and L. M. Richards and M. K. Junker and J. Gallagher and W. T. Barry and J. Geradts and N. Ramanujam, Rapid noninvasive optical imaging of tissue composition in breast tumor margins, American Journal Of Surgery, vol. 198 no. 4 (October, 2009), pp. 566 -- 574, ISSN 0002-9610 [abs]
5. J.H. Ostrander, C.M. McMahon, S. Lem, S.R. Millon, V.L. Seewaldt, N. Ramanujam, The Optical Redox Ratio Differentiates Breast Cancer Cell Lines Based on Receptor Status, Cancer Research, vol. 70 no. 11 (2010), pp. 4759-4766
6. Millon SR, Ostrander JH, Brown JQ, Rajeha AM, Seewaldt VL, Ramanujam N, Uptake of 2-NBDG as a method to monitor therapy response in breast cancer cell lines, Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, vol. 126 no. 1 (2011), pp. 55-62