DOLPHIN, a non-invasive imaging system from the laboratories of KI faculty members Angela Belcher and Paula Hammond, uses near-infrared light to find tiny tumors no more than a few hundred cells large. In a study appearing in Scientific Reports, researchers used their imaging system to track a 0.1-millimeter fluorescent probe through the digestive tract of a living mouse. The study also showed that DOLPHIN (which stands for "Detection of Optically Luminescent Probes using Hyperspectral and diffuse Imaging in Near-infrared") can detect the probes to a tissue depth of 8 centimeters–about 5 centimeters deeper than any existing biomedical optical imaging technique. The researchers are adapting their imaging technology for early diagnosis of ovarian and other cancers that are currently difficult to detect until late stages. The study was led by Mazumdar-Shaw International Oncology Fellow Neelkanth Bardhan, and was supported by the Koch Institute Frontier Research Program and the Bridge Project.