Multicontrast Spectroscopy/Imaging and Digitalization – a Key to Personalized Medicine

Understanding the causes of diseases, recognizing them earlier and treating them more specifically - hopes that are associated with modern biomedicine - requires the determination of diagnostic, prognostic and predictive factors including their comprehensive evaluation in just a few steps or ideally in a single step. In this context, the sharp rise in cancer due to an ageing society and the rapid spread of life-threatening infectious diseases (due in part to unknown pathogens) and antibiotic-resistant germs, which is partly due to increasing worldwide mobility but also to the ill-considered administration of broad- spectrum antibiotics, should be mentioned in particular. An effective and early diagnosis and personalized therapy of cancer and infections requires new methods of differential diagnosis and represents an outstanding task of medicine. In principle, the following applies to all diseases: the earlier treatment begins, the better the chances of cure. There is therefore a great need for new diagnostic methods for targeted early diagnosis of diseases in order to be able to use targeted therapy as early as possible. Light plays a key role in the implementation of these ambitious goals. The use of optical technologies in medical diagnostics and therapy has increased rapidly over the last 10 years. Thereby photonic research is supported by advances in the field of digitization for the automated evaluation of optical data using methods of artificial intelligence, or for the online display of optical measurement signals via augmented/virtual reality. Here we present examples at the interface optics/photonics and digitization for personalized medical diagnostics and therapy. We will introduce a series of innovative multi-contrast marker free spectroscopy approaches for (I) rapid diagnosis of infectious diseases for targeted antibiotic administration, which is crucial for the survival of patients (e.g. in a sespis); (II) precise intraoperative tumor margin control, because reliable tumor margin recognition during an intervention is the key to effective tumor treatment; and (III) early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases of the fundus of the eye.

Acknowledgements: Financial support of the EU, the ”Thüringer Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Wissenschaft und Digitale Gesellschaft”, the ”Thüringer Aufbaubank”, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (BMBF), the German Science Foundation, the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie and the Carl-Zeiss Foundation are greatly acknowledged.