Katheryne Wilson
Special Seminar
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Radiology
Stanford University School of Medicine
Seminar Information
Current breast cancer screening methods lack both sensitivity and specificity, delaying cancer detection and treatment, especially in women with dense breast tissues. Therefore, noninvasive methods to detect and differentiate clinically actionable versus non-actionable lesions are critically needed. Ultrasound, photoacoustic, and fluorescence molecular imaging techniques combined with translatable probes may fulfill this need. Here, Dr. Wilson will discuss her research towards using label-free spectroscopic photoacoustic imaging to noninvasively detect breast cancers at their earliest stages (hyperplasia and ductal carcinoma in situ) and the development and use of clinically-translatable antibody-dye conjugates, which undergo detectable endocytosis-mediated shifts in optical absorption spectra, as targeted molecular probes for combined photoacoustic and fluorescence molecular imaging.
Dr. Wilson graduated with a B.S, in Bioengineering from the University of Washington in 2008 and her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 2012 where she researched multimodal contrast agents for combined ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on optical and acoustic molecular imaging, both label-free and using clinically translatable molecular probes, for breast cancer detection.