BioMed 2012 – That’s All Folks

The combined BioMed and Digital Holography Conferences has officially come to an end. As the general chairs said goodbye, they thanked everyone for attending and summarized the combined conferences which had over 600 attendees, with 137 oral presentations, 247 posters, 13 postdeadline papers, 8 plenary talks, 2 days of sun, and more coffee pots than I could keep track of. Student awards also went out to the best posters and included 10 first place prizes and 17 second place prizes – all of which came with a little spending money. Congrats to those who won!

I also just filled out the online survey put together by the OSA to collect feedback about the conference (took about 10 minutes). All BioMed and DH attendees should have received an email with the link and responses are requested by May 18th. These comments are greatly appreciated and will be used to improve future meetings.

Speaking of upcoming conferences, the next BioMed meeting will be held in Miami in 2014 at a TBD hotel with Drs. Vadim Backman from Northwestern and StefanAndersson-Engels from Lunds Universitet in Sweden as General Chairs. But for those who just can’t wait that long, there will also be an OSA Life Science congress in April of 2013 in Hawaii.

Since this will be my last post as the official BioMed blogger, I would like to thank everyone at The Optical Society who helped put this together.  Specifically, I want to acknowledge April Zack (from OSA Membership) who has proofread every post, suggested several topics, and provided helpful encouragement along the way. Thanks so much April!

Hope everyone had a good time in Miami and enjoyed reading this blog as I did my best to summarize the conference in an entertaining way. Best of luck with everybody's future work and I hope to see many of the optics community again at BioMed 2014!

BioMed 2012 Day 4: Recap

The fourth and final day of BioMed 2012 included talks from 8am to 6pm. Since I could obviously not be at all three parallel sessions, I was only able to see a fraction of the research presented, but here were a few of the morning highlights:

1) Work using elastic scattering spectroscopy to image the blebbing associated with apoptosis (BW2B.1). 

2) A group at Texas A&M using pump-probe OCT to image tadpole vasculature ex vivo (with 14 micrometer lateral and 11 micrometer axial resolution (BW2A.3)). 

3) Quantification of electro-kinetic properties by applying a small voltage across tissue while imaging with OCT (BW2A.4).

4) Collateral vessel measurements in a murine model of hindlimb ischemia using a combination of hyperspectral O2 saturation imaging and OCT (BW2A.5).

5) Research by a group at Harvard that uses spectroscopy to identify fetal red blood cells within maternal blood (BW2B.6). Apparently fetal RBCs are nucleated and have a higher hemoglobin content, improving oxygenation and allowing for spectroscopic identification (even though the Hb absorption spectrum is identical in both.

And then after lunch when the coffee had kicked in for me and I was able to take more detailed notes:

6) A group at Dartmouth using both raster scanning and broad field imaging to determine breast cancer margins (BW3B.1). When the imaging parameters were optimized, these techniques were shown to highly accurate (88% for single fiber scanning, 90% for broad field imaging).

7) Work using scattering anisotropy to measure tissue architecture at the "mesoscopic scale" - a scale between microscopic and macroscopic (BW3B.3). Applications include improving Mohs surgery for skin cancer (a procedure that I recently learned about as my grandfather will be undergoing it in a few weeks).

8) Whole body fluorescence imaging in humans after a bolus injection of indocyanine green (BW4A.6). As many at the conference are focused on animal research (myself included), it was nice to see some people working on applying optical applications to whole body human imaging. The movies of fluorescent light collecting in the head were definitely entertaining but also kind of freaky.

9) A group at the University of Birmingham that combined surface capture imaging, diffuse optical tomography, and bioluminescence tomography (BW4A.7). While the acronym is kind of a mouthful (SC-DOT-BLT), this model based approach seemed to accurately identify the location of bioluminescent probes within a mouse-shaped phantom.

On a personal note, I would like to say that it has been great to hear about recent advancements and current work being done by leading optical groups all over the world. One more post will be coming giving an overview of the week, but I have really enjoyed my first time attending the BioMed Conference.  Now it's off to South Beach to enjoy my last night in Florida! 

BioMed 2012 Day 3: Recap and Rump Session

Day 3 began with a plenary by Dr. Bruce Tromberg focused on the development of diffuse optical imaging methods and how they are being currently used in the clinic (BTu1A.1). Among all the applications, I thought the work using near-infrared spectroscopy to measure oxygen saturation in breast tissues to determine if cancer patients are responding to neoadjuvant therapy was the most impressive. It was also great to see that a large number investigators in the field have started working together in a multi-site effort to assess individual patient's response to chemotherapy.

The second plenary by Dr. Xiaowei Zhuang was an overview of some impressive work to image at resolutions below the diffraction limit (BTu1A.2). Using photo-switchable fluorescent dyes and stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy, investigators have shown that they can image microtubules, clathrin pits, synapse receptors, and other small biologic structures that were previously only visible with electron microscopy. While further resolution improvements are likely, the images this technique has already produces are incredibly impressive.  

Other research I learned about today included fluorescence tomography efforts to track and quantify rare circulating cancer cells in vivo (BTu2A.2), dynamic imaging of airway epithelial cell motion using OCT that can be applied to a variety of lung diseases (BTu4B.6), and a group in Japan that has developed a 300-camera array for "ultra-realistic" remote communication (DTu4C.2 and DTu4C.3). I am hoping that it won't be long before hologram-calls to friends and family are a reality.

The day ended with the OIDA Rump Session where representatives from the NIH, academia, and a variety of companies with a focus in optical technology. Each panel member had interesting insight regarding what it takes to bring a technology from an idea to commercialization. Briefly, the subsequent discussion with a large amount of audience participation included the following:

1) Knowing when to commercialize a technology is sometimes just as important as what the technology is.
2) The price of an imaging system is crucial, but often times investigators in academia don't know what the market would support.
3) There are two common routes to market for academics: A) start there own company or B) license the technology to someone else. While licensing makes certain things easier, it is important to keep as much of the equity as possible.
4) Venture capitalists will sometimes take a technological risk, but will never take a market risk.  If the customer base is not there, it doesn't matter how great the invention is.
5) Justifying to clinicians that a new technology will positively impact patient care is critical. Quantifying information that is interesting but will not impact treatment won't work.
6) The optics community should focus on leading with their strengths (kind of like a hand of bridge?).  The fact that imaging with light does not use ionizing radiation, is relatively inexpensive, and can be portable should be emphasized to the medical community.
7) Focus on the unmet clinical need, not the technology.

BioMed 2012 unfortunately finishes tomorrow, but with 4 more two hour sessions, 3 parallel tracks, and 2 coffee breaks, I am sure there will be plenty more interesting research presented before the conference ends!

BioMed 2012 Day 3: In Case You Missed It...

A great way to watch a talk you were interested in but may have missed is the Biomedical Optics Congress recorded presentation site. This website requires users to login, but has recordings of the presentations given in Symphony Balroom I and II. The site includes both the slides and audio, and also highlights "Most Watched" presentations. Talks are usually uploaded within 24 hours, making it a great way to catch up on the early morning sessions you may have missed in case the hotel wakeup was not effective...

BioMed 2012 Day 2: The Hits Keep Coming

Day 2 started with a plenary by the inventor of the charge-coupled device (Dr. George Smith) that provided a great overview of the research done at Bell Labs over several decades. The 2009 Nobel Laureate in Physics said that it was a matter of weeks between the first discussion of the idea and an initial prototype that proved the technology could work. My favorite moment was in a response to a question after his talk, Dr. Smith said that if he knew how to advance CCD technology to measure light intensity, then he would not certainly not tell anybody until he had the chance to submit a patent. This was followed by a presentation by Dr. Byoungho Lee who provided an overview of the history of the 3D display and alluded to where this impressive technology is headed in the future (making me want to start shopping for a 3D television). Other talks I enjoyed included:

1) A group at U Penn using an oligonucleotide-based probe to image RNA in living cells (BM2A.2). This techniques shows a 100-fold increase in fluorescence when the probe is bound compared to the quenched unbound state. After microporation, these "Ratiometric BiMolecular Beacons" can be used to actually image individual RNA molecules as they move from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. Very impressive!

2) A group in St. Louis using an integrated fiber-based approach to combine diffuse optical tomography, NanoSPECT, and CT for a multimodality imaging (BM2A.6). Coregistering molecular and anatomical data certainly gives researchers a better idea as to where both optical and nuclear signal is coming from.

3) A label-free technique called spatial light interference microscopy, a novel sparse deconvolution method, that a group in Illinois has demonstrated can increase image resolution 2.5-fold (BM4B.2). The investigators used SLIM to visualize coil-like structures within E. coli cells that were not visible with other techniques. As long as the e. coli stays under the microscope and not in my dinner, I will be happy.

Last night was the official conference reception with drinks and appetizers. I went hungry and ready to network!

BioMed 2012 Day 1: Recap

The first day of BioMed 2012 is officially in the history books and I don't think it would be too much to call it a smashing success so far.  With three parallel tracts and a large number of posters, I clearly couldn't get to everything, but some highlights in my opinion include:

1) Three-photon imaging work by a group at Cornell that produces 10,000x higher signal to background ratio than two photon imaging (BSu2B.2). This technique allows for in vivo imaging neurons up to 1 mm below the cortical surface by taking advantage of the 1700 nm spectral window.

2) A poster showing the development of methods to measure simultaneous optical and electrical measurements of nuerovascular coupling in conscious rats (BSu3A.90). Apparently asking the animals nicely to hold still does not work.

3) Second-harmonic generation imaging microscopy capable of quantifying changes in structure and composition of collagen in the extracellular matrix by a group in Wisconsin (BSu4B.1). These methods can be used to characterize changes in the extra-cellular matrix in a variety of cancers.

Tomorrow starts with a plenary from a Nobel Prize winner (George Smith), followed by sessions on molecular probes, photoacoustic tomography, and brain signals.  I have been reassured there will be plenty of coffee again tomorrow during the breaks for those needing a little extra help to keep going...

BioMed 2012 Day 1: Opening Ceremonies

BioMed 2012 has officially begun! I was kind of hoping for a ceremony with either drums or a flaming arrow, but the opening remarks were a great introduction and highlighted the fact that conference submissions have more than doubled from 200 in 1994 to more than 450 this year. The opening was then followed by plenary presentations by Drs. Lihong Wang and Mathias Fink. Dr. Wang highlighted the large number of applications photoacoustic tomography can be used to study (including sentinal lymph node imaging, oxygenation levels of single red blood cells, and targeted gold nanocages that can also release drugs once localized to a tumor), while Dr. Fink gave a technical overview of ultrasonic time-reversal methods and its applications in detecting microcalcifications, mapping soft tissue elasticity, and imaging seizures in the brains of a rat model of epilepsy.

Talks later this morning will focus on brain imaging, novel fluorescent contrast, and special techniques for digital holography, followed by a poster session and afternoon presentations.

I also want to thank the conference organizers for deciding against holding the conference outside since it's been raining all day and does not look to be letting up anytime soon. Hopefully the hotel restaurant can handle a large crowd because I'm not sure how many of us will be brave enough to go outside in this weather to get lunch off-site...