Quantum Diamond Sensors Take Aim at Early Endometriosis Diagnosis with NIH Award

Endometriosis is one of the most common and most stubbornly elusive diseases in women’s health, affecting an estimated one in ten women worldwide, yet it has historically resisted every attempt at simple, reliable diagnosis. At the University of Florida, electrical and computer engineer Laura Kim believes the answer may lie not in a new drug or a new surgical technique, but in a chip carved from diamond that exploits the strange rules of quantum mechanics. Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, has received a Trailblazer Award from the National Institutes of Health to develop a minimally invasive, diamond-based quantum sensing platform capable of detecting subtle magnetic signals at the microscopic level — signals that could offer an entirely new route to diagnosing endometriosis earlier and more accurately than is possible today.

The award, which will span three years, is designed to support innovative, high-risk, high-reward research programs led by early-stage investigators. In Kim’s case, it funds an ambitious cross-disciplinary effort to translate technology built in the quantum laboratory into a practical biomedical instrument. It marks the first time her quantum-sensor technology will be applied to biomedical research, with endometriosis serving as the inaugural clinical application, supported by an interdisciplinary team that spans engineering and medicine across the university.

The physics at the heart of the project rests on one of nature’s most convenient accidents. Certain defects in the diamond crystal lattice — most notably the nitrogen-vacancy center, in which two adjacent carbon atoms are replaced by a nitrogen atom and a missing atom — behave as tiny quantum systems whose electronic spin states can be initialized, manipulated and read out optically, even at room temperature. These spin states are exquisitely sensitive to magnetic fields, allowing the diamond to function as a nanoscale magnetometer. Unlike conventional quantum sensors that demand cryogenic cooling or vacuum systems, diamond-based platforms can operate under ordinary laboratory and potentially clinical conditions, which is precisely what makes them attractive for probing living tissue. Kim’s team has already developed such a quantum sensing platform — a diamond chip — in her laboratory, and the Trailblazer Award will fund the engineering work needed to point that extraordinary sensitivity at biological problems.

Why magnetic signals? Biological tissues generate weak magnetic fields as a by-product of their electrical and metabolic activity. These fields are fantastically faint — far too weak for conventional magnetometers to pick up reliably at the microscopic scale — but quantum sensors built on diamond can, in principle, resolve them. The hypothesis driving Kim’s project is that endometriotic tissue carries measurable magnetic and metabolic signatures that distinguish it from healthy tissue, and that a sufficiently sensitive, minimally invasive probe could read those signatures directly. If successful, the approach would allow clinicians to detect the disease quantitatively, at an earlier stage, without the invasive procedures that current diagnosis demands.

That diagnostic gap is the clinical engine behind the project. Today, endometriosis is typically confirmed only through laparoscopic surgery, requiring hospitalization, general anesthesia and a surgeon’s trained eye to locate lesions that can be small, scattered and visually ambiguous. Patients routinely wait years from the onset of symptoms to a definitive diagnosis, during which time the disease — a debilitating inflammatory condition — can progress, causing chronic pain, scarring and infertility. “Endometriosis is a debilitating inflammatory disease that affects one in 10 women and currently lacks reliable noninvasive diagnostic tools,” Kim said. “Our goal is to engineer quantum sensors that can measure biological signatures that have previously been extremely difficult to access. By bringing that capability to endometriosis, we hope to enable earlier and more quantitative detection while establishing a broadly applicable platform for magnetic and metabolic diagnostics in women’s health.”

The technical challenge Kim has set for herself is substantial: taking the extraordinary sensitivity demonstrated by quantum systems in the laboratory and packaging it into a practical tool capable of measuring real biological tissue. Quantum sensors are notoriously delicate instruments, and bridging the gap between a carefully controlled optical bench experiment and a clinic-ready measurement of human tissue requires solving problems in sensor design, signal extraction, sample handling and data interpretation all at once. That is why the project is, from its inception, a team effort rather than a solo engineering exercise. “As engineers, we develop powerful technologies, but we need to understand the problems that matter to the people who will ultimately use them,” Kim said. “That is what makes this collaboration so exciting. We are bringing together quantum sensing, biomedical engineering and clinical expertise to solve a problem none of us could address alone.”

Kim’s collaborators bring exactly the complementary expertise the project demands. Jon Dobson, the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Emeritus Professor of Biomedical Engineering, contributes deep experience in applying physical-science techniques to biomedical questions, including magnetically based diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Amira Quevedo, an assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the UF College of Medicine, serves as the project’s primary clinical researcher. “Investigators with different backgrounds often bring unique perspectives to bear on a problem, especially when it is outside their specific area of expertise,” Dobson said. “This project would not have been possible without combining Dr. Kim’s exceptionally innovative technology with Dr. Quevedo’s passion for helping her patients and knowledge of endometriosis.”

Quevedo’s role anchors the effort in clinical reality. She will determine the best approach for evaluating and integrating Kim’s technology using tissue from participants with endometriosis, and she will facilitate patient recruitment through the UF Health Center of Excellence in Complex Endometriosis Care. That clinical pipeline is essential: validating a fundamentally new sensing modality requires carefully characterized tissue samples and clinicians who understand both the disease’s biology and the everyday constraints of gynecologic practice. “Dr. Kim’s innovative technology has the potential to fundamentally change how endometriosis is diagnosed, shifting us from a predominantly hospital-based diagnosis that requires abdominal surgery and general anesthesia toward a simplified, clinic-based approach that could ultimately be incorporated into an outpatient gynecologic visit,” Quevedo said. For patients, that shift could be transformative — replacing a major surgical confirmation with something closer to a routine examination.

Quevedo, who works alongside Kim, Dobson and the team’s students, describes the collaboration as a chance to see the disease through an entirely new lens. “Bringing together our strengths as collaborators allows us to ask questions and develop solutions that would not otherwise be possible,” she said. “Patients constantly ask me why their endometriosis was not detected sooner. Earlier diagnosis creates an opportunity for earlier access to effective therapies, less cumulative disease burden and ultimately better quality of life for people living with endometriosis.”

If the three-year program succeeds, its implications may extend well beyond a single disease. Kim describes the platform as broadly applicable to magnetic and metabolic diagnostics in women’s health, suggesting that a validated diamond-based quantum sensor could one day serve as a general-purpose instrument for reading the faint magnetic fingerprints of biological tissue — whether to detect inflammation, monitor metabolism or screen for other conditions that currently evade early diagnosis. For a field in which quantum technology has often promised more than it has delivered to medicine, the project represents a carefully targeted attempt to move a quantum sensor out of the laboratory and into the clinic, one of the most consequential journeys an emerging technology can make. It begins, fittingly, with a disease that medicine has struggled to see for far too long — and with a diamond chip built to make the invisible measurable.

Subject of Research: Development of a diamond-based quantum sensing platform for minimally invasive, early-stage detection of endometriosis.

Article Title: Electrical and computer engineering trailblazer Laura Kim targets endometriosis with prestigious award

Article References: Electrical and computer engineering trailblazer Laura Kim targets endometriosis with prestigious award. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

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Keywords: Laura Kim, University of Florida, endometriosis, quantum sensing, NIH Trailblazer Award, diamond sensors, biomedical engineering, women's health, magnetic diagnostics, medical diagnostics, early detection, quantum technology