Metasurface-enhanced spectrochemical tissue diagnostics and biosensing

Label-free and nondestructive mid-infrared (MIR) vibrational hyperspectral imaging has gained significance as a valuable analytical tool for analyzing biomedical tissue samples. However, the complex chemical composition and heterogeneous nature of tissue specimens along with the weak interaction of infrared light with biomolecules, pose limitations on the analytical performance of traditional MIR chemical imaging. In this talk, I will introduce an advanced MIR spectrochemical tissue imaging technique that utilizes plasmonic metasurfaces to enable the capture of quantitative molecular maps of large-area murine brain tissue sections. The proposed surface-enhanced chemical imaging method using plasmonic metasurfaces has great potential for translational biomedical research and diagnostic clinical histopathology.