Center for Analytical Instrument Development

New tools for imaging physiological systems down to the cellular level and below are the subject of intense national interest. CAID is involved in the development of new tools which includes advances in multiphoton optical imaging and in such non-traditional imaging methods as mass spectrometry. Instrumentation planned will exploit these new advances to detect and identify metastatic loci during surgery. The imaging mass spectrometer will employ ionization in air by a new method, desorption electrospray ionization (DESI), while new fluorescence instrumentation will include femtosecond laser/confocal microscopes and Raman microprobes.