WASHINGTON: Indian American Professor Rohit Bhargava of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has developed stainless staining that provides a new tool for clinicians and researchers for better diagnosis of cancer.

His new technique paints tissue samples with light instead of chemical stains or dyes.

Using infrared spectroscopic imaging for microscopy, Bhargava has reported the development of label-free chemical imaging to provide the same information as molecular stains.

The new, advanced infrared imaging technique uses no chemical stains, instead scanning the sample with infrared light to directly measure the chemical composition of the cells. The computer then translates spectral information from the microscope into chemical stain patterns, without the muss or fuss of applying dyes to the cells.

“This approach promises to have immediate and long-term impact in changing pathology to a multiplexed molecular science – in both research and clinical practice,” Bhargava said.

The National Institutes of Health supported this work. The Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, Illinois, and the University of Illinois Cancer Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago were partners in this work.

Rohit Bhargava received his Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University in 2000 and undergraduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi in 1996. He is a professor in the UIUC Department of Bioengineering and a full-time faculty member in the Beckman Institute Bioimaging Science and Technology group.