Jaeyul Lee, PhD

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a serious disease with a high death rate, but it affects people very differently and doctors currently have no reliable way to predict how it will behave in each person. We plan to study microscopic changes in fibrosis using high-resolution optical imaging as a new way to predict how early IPF will progress in individual patients. In a small study, we found specific patterns in collagen changes that allowed us to create an analytical tool called an optical biomarker for patients with IPF. This marker was able to perfectly predict which patients would die or need a lung transplant within three years. In this project, we will test this biomarker in more patients to see how well it predicts outcomes and track collagen changes over time using repeated imaging. This research could lead to more personalized care for IPF patients and give us new insights into how collagen changes at the microscopic level—something we cannot currently see with other methods.

Catalyst Award, applied under the Dalsemer Award

Update: Our group has established a technique, endobronchial optical coherence tomography (EB-OCT), as a low-risk, bronchoscope-compatible, minimally invasive microscopic imaging tool for early diagnosis of interstitial lung disease and other pulmonary diseases. Additionally, we have developed and tested a modification of the imaging technology, polarization-sensitive endobronchial optical coherence tomography (PS-EB-OCT). This advanced version of standard EB-OCT creates detailed 3D microscopic images of the lungs while also detecting collagen, which forms scar tissue and visualizes how the collagen fibers are arranged. To date, we have made significant progress in refining our framework to more accurately, reproducibly and rapidly quantify collagen organization. We are using this approach to analyze PS-EB-OCT data from people with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and continue to make progress toward our goal of using PS-EB-OCT to predict how early IPF will progress in individual patients.