Title: Multimodal Optical Coherence Tomography for Quantitative Assessment of Peripheral Nerve Injury

Peripheral nerve injuries can lead to numbness, loss of movement, or long-term pain. During surgery, doctors must decide how much damaged nerve to remove before repairing it. This is difficult because injured nerves can look normal to naked eye. Removing too little damaged tissue may limit recovery, while removing too much can harm healthy nerves.
This project aims to provide surgeons a better way to “see” nerve health during surgery. We use a light-based noninvasive imaging method called optical coherence tomography (OCT). It works like ultrasound, but uses light instead of sound to create very detailed images of tissue. In addition to imaging, we measure how light interacts with the nerve to detect damage that cannot be seen directly by eye.
Nerve injury changes tissue in several ways, including its structure, fiber organization, and stiffness. To capture these changes, we combine multiple types of measurements to better tell healthy and damaged nerve apart. We also test safe methods to improve how deeply we can see below the tissue surface.
Our goal is to develop a tool that provide intuitive, color-coded maps of nerve health in real time during surgery. This could help surgeons make more accurate decisions, protect healthy nerve, and improve recovery of patients undergoing nerve repair.