NSF Award
1144025
1144025<br/>Perelman<br/><br/>The overall objective of this EAGER project is to develop a safe and relatively inexpensive multispectral molecular sensing optical technique based on Spatially Offset Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (SODRS), capable of non-invasive, reliable detection of brown fat and measurement of its mass and metabolic activity in humans. Until recently it was believed that adults did not have brown fat and only recent studies performed at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Joslin Diabetes Center (JDC), Harvard Medical School and at the University of Maastricht, Netherlands show that more than half of adult men and women may have enough brown fat in their bodies to burn off substantial amounts of white fat responsible for obesity. The studies also suggest that brown fat can play an important positive role, since obese people and people with high blood sugar have less brown fat than lean people and people with normal blood sugar. If indeed brown fat is common in adults, then finding ways to promote its activation could provide an important paradigm for preventing or treating obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. During the proposed one year EAGER pilot project they will develop and build a prototype SODRS molecular sensing instrument capable of detecting brown fat through approximately 1 cm of superficial tissue in humans.
