Elahe Parham

Position: PhD student in Biophotonics, Université Laval

Academia: 
Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering, University of Tehran, Teheran, Iran
Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran

Advisors: Prof. Daniel Côté and Prof. Martin Parent

Email: elahe.parham@cervo.ulaval.ca

Optical Guidance Neurosurgery Using a Wavelength-Swept System and Spectral Analysis by Artificial Intelligence

Raman spectroscopy has been used recently for disease diagnosting and studying biological tissues. A laser source which is capable of sweeping the wavelength will be used to obtain information about the vibrations of molecular bonds in different biological tissues. Since different tissues have different molecular structures, the generated Raman signal is expected to be different. Also the probability of Raman scattering depends on the wavelength of the light source, so using a narrow band light source may help to find more differences in the signal of a tissue. This project aimes to find out if there is the necessary information in the generated Raman signal to differentiate tissues and how the results of this technique is different from other techniques. Moreover, this method is going to be used to diagnose neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson. There are several limitations that should be considered, the constraints of a narrowband light source which influences the SNR, and there are several sources of noise which are caused by the detector, fibre, or even the acquisition time.

Biography

Elahe grew in Iran and she has done her BSc degrees in electrical engineering in Amirkabir University of Technology (2011-2015). She obtained her MSc in Biomedical Engineering in University of Tehran (2016-2019). She worked on the structural connections of neurons in the human brain and she got familiar with different signal acquisition methods of the brain and the artificial intelligence techniques to analyze the signal. She became interested in the structural properties of the brain and she decided to continue her education for the optical imaging of the brain and analysis the information that the optical signal convey. As a PhD student in DCCLab, she aimes to use the wavelength-swept system to obtain a Raman spectrum of the brain tissue to be used during the surgeries.