Her work encompasses both fundamental and translational areas of research, primarily focused on the investigation of novel optical technologies for the early detection and therapy of unstable atherosclerotic plaques. The research initiatives in the Nadkarni lab span in the near term from the investigation of novel optical methods using multimodal approaches to detect unstable plaque and development of new treatment strategies for plaque stabilization using ex vivo tissue and in vivo animal studies, towards the longer term direction of translating these techniques to clinical studies. In addition, the group is developing optical approaches and endoscopic probes to evaluate soft tissue biomechanics for a variety of clinical applications.