Boppart started the Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory at UIUC in 2000, an
interdisciplinary research group working at the intersection of
engineering,
medicine, and
biology. The research focuses on the development of biophotonics for
translational medicine in
primary care and
oncology. Building upon the development of OCT in his graduate studies, Boppart expanded OCT to new application areas. OCT was used to image the
tympanic membrane (eardrum) to determine the presence of
biofilm, a complicating factor in
ear infections. He also developed OCT for
intraoperative breast cancer imaging to determine the status of the
resection margin. At UIUC, his research interests expanded to include
nonlinear optical microscopy. He developed nonlinear interferometric vibrational imaging, a variation of
CARS microscopy, for imaging cancer resection margins. He also pioneered multimodal-multiphoton microscopy, the combination of several nonlinear optical imaging modalities into a single imaging system. These nonlinear optical imaging technologies were enabled by the development of an optical fiber-based
supercontinuum laser source. In 2017, Boppart demonstrated
coherent control of
neurons. Boppart applied computational imaging to
coherent optical microscopy by solving the
inverse problem for OCT. This allows for three-dimensional imaging with extended
depth-of-field and digital correction of
optical aberrations. == Administration and entrepreneurship ==