Determining whether a patient will respond to chemo

I’m finding the plenary talks here at OSA’s Biomedical Optics and 3D Imaging conference particularly inspiring. For instance, this morning, Bruce Tromberg’s (University of California Irvine) talk on diffuse optical spectroscopy (DOS) as applied to breast cancer provided hope that cancer patients can be assessed before administration of chemotherapy to determine whether their tumors are likely to respond positively to the treatment (it turns out, you can predict this). Anybody who has watched a loved one suffer though this devastating treatment for naught will certainly appreciate this point.