PhD Candidate Mustafa Unal in Dr. Akkus' Case Orthopaedic Bioengineering Laboratories won a Baxter Young Investigator award for his work on this Bone Hydration Detector, supported in part by the think[box] Student Project Fund. Traditional Raman spectroscopy offers a non-destructive way to measure chemical composition of various biological minerals and compounds, however protein-related background fluorescence makes it difficult to detect water content in biological tissues. A novel improvement to Raman spectroscopy has made it possible to detect water content in bone - and to uniquely measure different bound water components and freely flowing water. This novel measurement of hydration status was then used to predict bone quality.
Contact:
Mustafa Unal, mxu30@case.edu