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...

Bienvenido a Miami!

While Chi-Town's got it goin' on and NY doesn't sleep, Miami is going to be bringing the heat this next week for the optics community. (Or will it rain on our parade?) Will the media coverage for the conference rival that of the Panther's hockey loss?  Did Lebron eventually decide to to join the Heat because of BioMed 2012? Will the new Dolphins draft pick (and orthopedic surgeon in training) attend a few of the plenaries?  Who knows? All that is certain is that I'm going to enjoy the sun, savor Miami's strong Cuban heritage through its culinary specialties and learn about the most recent advancements in biomedical optics.  Hope everyone is excited and I am looking forward to meeting other optics folks in Florida!

Using Light to Make Sound

Being somewhat new to the optics fields, I only recently learned about photoacoustic imaging and how it works. In short, light can provide great tissue contrast, but the scattering of photons means they do not travel in a straight line. This makes imaging that relies solely on photons limited to depths within the optical diffusion limit (roughly 1 mm in the skin). Conversely, ultrasound imaging can penetrate tissue more deeply, but has poor contrast and speckle artifacts. Thus, investigators such as Lihong Wang use an imaging method that optimizes the photoacoustic effect where pulsed laser light can generate a rapid rise in temperature deep within tissue, inducing emission of ultrasound waves from the subsequent thermoelastic expansion. This combination of optical and ultrasound technology gives new meaning to the term "multi-modality imaging" and has a variety of applications, including the ability to define the boundaries in skin cancer. Dr. Wang's plenary at BioMed 2012 on how photoacoustic tomography uses ultrasound to break through the optical diffusion limit will take place on Sunday, April 29th, from 8-9:30am in room Symphony I & II.

Making the Most of Your Time at BioMed 2012

The BioMed 2012 Meeting website has recently added a link to a personal itinerary planner.  I have already put together a rough schedule and found it very useful as a way to search for collaborators, friends, and topics that are of interest.  Plus, once you have it put together, your itinerary can be printed, added to your calendar, or exported to Excel.  Including the short abstracts in the schedule will also surely help me remember what each talk or poster is about the day of.  If you are anything like me and enjoy hopping between sessions, the itinerary planner is a great tool to help!

Tupac Lives?

The Twittersphere has been abuzz about a recent performance at Coachella, the annual three-day music and arts festival in California.  A "virtual rendition" of the late Tupac Shakur was seen onstage rapping and greeting the audience, many of whom were blown away by what the media has begun calling a "Tupac hologram."  The only problem is that, while impressive, the special effect was not in fact a hologram.  As described in this article, the optical illusion was actually a technique known as "Pepper's Ghost," a trick first described in the 16th century.  While many in the audience seemed to think they were seeing a something akin to Princess Leia's plea for help, this illusion can actually be created with a hidden room, large piece of glass, and digital projector.  Those working on advancing digital holography will have to spread the word that real holograms are even more impressive!

Will we see a similar "virtual performance" in Miami?  Only time will tell...

The Feld Award

The OSA Foundation recently established the Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award in honor of Professor Feld’s fundamental contributions to laser science and applied physics. While the award is going to be featured at this year's BioMed meeting, it will not be given until 2013 to recognize an individual for innovative and influential contributions to the field of biophotonics.

Professor Feld, who passed away in 2010 after an eight-year struggle with multiple myeloma, was the director of the MIT George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory. His research spanned a large variety of topics, including atomic spectroscopy, laser-nuclear interactions, and radiative processes. He made the first observation of superradiance in 1973,  demonstrated suppressed spontaneous emission and radiative level shifts in an open optical resonator in the 1980s, and developed a single atom laser in 1994.

All of those achievements are impressive, but I was especially intrugued by Professor Feld's ability to incorporate his passion for karate into his love for physics.  Edmund Bertschinger, the head of MIT’s Department of Physics said, "Michael delighted in illustrating the physics of karate with classroom demonstrations like breaking a wooden board with a swift blow. And when Michael stopped advancing at the brown belt, he encouraged his sons to persist to obtain black belts, showing that the true master is the one who helps others to achieve their best.” Board breaking during lectures would certainly make force demonstrations more interesting, and I wonder if he ever used the "wax on, wax off" lesson with any of his advisees.

Nominations for the 2013 award are now being accepted, and for those who'd like to make a contribution to endow the award, visit the OSA Foundation to donate online.

The Top Three Things I'm Excited to Eat in Miami...

1) Hamakyu and spicy tuna rolls from Tony Chan's Water Club. Close to the Hilton, this place is supposed to have great waterfront views, high quality fish, and floor-to-ceiling windows into the kitchen letting patrons watch as each dish is prepared.  The website suggests customers could learn a thing or two if they watch carefully, but I'll likely leave sushi up to the experts.

2) Bolognese with home-made rigatoni, hard boiled egg, and pecorino romano cheese at Bin 18. Apparently this place decided tables might be too expensive, so they went with concrete slabs over wine barrels - supposedly ideal for sharing.  As long as chef-owner Alfredo Patino still provides a fork, I should be able to deal with it.

3) Chicken tandoori with a side of garlic naan and a salted lassi at the Bengal Modern Indian Cuisine.  This place has two levels of seating, is a quarter mile from the conference, and offers a supposedly amazing 3 course daily lunch for $13.  Reviews online say that if you ask for extra spicy, it might your tongue want to jump out of your mouth.

Which one will be the best?  You'll have to wait for "The Decision" at the end of the conference...

Cell Motility, Digital Holography, and Drug Screening

I recently spoke with David Nolte, a Professor in Physics at Purdue University, about his work using holographic optical coherence imaging (HOCI) to quantify subcellular motion from deep within living tissue. His group has developed this relatively new imaging technique that uses cellular motility as a novel contrast agent. Data can be obtained from up to 1mm within tissue - a range most microscopic imaging methods cannot reach. I was impressed that this technique can be directly applied to a variety of biomedical applications, including monitoring the cytoskeletal response to drug candidates. Dr. Nolte's talk on Sunday (4/29) from 3:30-4:00pm in Concerto D is titled "Digital Holography of Cellular Motions in Live Tissue" and should be of great interest to those interested in digital holography and its use in drug screening.

Diffuse Optical Spectroscopy in Orange County

I met Dr. Bruce Tromberg a few years ago during a visit I made to UC Irvine. Besides being impressed with the gorgeous campus in Southern California, I was able to see his laboratory and meet with several of the students, postdocs, and research technicians he worked with. As an expert in diffuse optical spectroscopy (DOS), he told me how the use of multiple optical contrast elements such as absorption, scattering, fluorescence, and speckle can be used to measure various optical and physiological properties such as blood flow, vascular density, extracellular matrix composition, and cellular metabolism. Specifically, DOS uses spatially- and temporally-modulated sources and model-based analyses to produce dynamic in vivo functional imaging with variable spatial localization. His clinical work has focused on the use of broadband DOS to measure breast tumor metabolism with sufficient sensitivity for cancer detection and therapeutic drug monitoring. Broadband spatial frequency-domain imaging is also used in animal models to dynamically map intrinsic brain signals, monitor the efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents, and form depth-resolved tomographic images of fluorescence and hemodynamics. Dr. Tromberg is giving a plenary talk at 8am on Tuesday (5/1) that is titled, "Diffuse Optical Spectroscopy: Technology Development and Clinical Translation." It should be a great talk for those interested in the current and future role of diffuse optics in medical imaging!

CBS Sunday Morning, Bell Labs, and Nobel Laureates

So I was laying on the couch with my dog, coffee in hand, enjoying my typical Sunday morning routine with Charles Osgood.  I know I may be the only person under 40 who DVR's CBS Sunday Morning program, but I find the the bugle intro, Osgood's bow tie, and moment of nature ending kind of tranquil. Between the stories about alpacas and Fiesta ware, they had a in-depth special on the spirit of invention at Bell Laboratories.  Did you know that Bell Labs has produced over 30,000 patents - an average of more than 7 patents a day!  Located mainly in Murray Hill, NJ, the laboratory eventually employed more than 25,000 people at its peak and directly led to 7 Nobel Prizes.  Now, you may be asking yourself what this has to do with OSA's Biomed 2012.  Good question!  Well, George Smith, a plenary speaker (Monday, April 30th, 8:00-8:45am), worked at Bell Labs for over 25 years in various roles, including Head of the Device Concepts Department.  As co-inventor of the charge coupled device, a discovery for wich he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009, Dr. Smith helped advance area and linear imaging devices.  CCD technology has been used to replace imaging tubes previously needed for commercial cameras and cam-corders.  I am certain he will provide interesting insight into research at Bell during his talk first thing Monday morning, but I'm also hoping he also discusses his 55,000 mile sailing adventures around the world after he retired!

Why I am attending OSA's Biomed 2012...

First off, welcome to the Biomedical Optics and 3D Imaging 2012 blog!  This is your place to come for the latest information as the optics community takes their talents to South Beach.

I am attending this meeting mainly because our abstract was accepted and I will be giving a talk ("In Vivo Fluorescence Lifetime Detection of a Cathepsin-Activatable Probe in Infarcted Myocardium," presentation BM2A.4, Monday 4/30, 11:15-11:30am).  That being said, I am also excited to learn more about recent advancements in the biomedical optics field, network with leading researchers, and increase my vitamin D levels while also enjoying the Miami night life.

Several outstanding plenary speakers have been arranged, and while 8am sessions are certainly early, I am sure they are will be worth the 5-hour-energy shots needed to be there. Speakers include Mathias Fink (ESPCI Paris Tech), Byoungho Lee (Seoul National University), George Smith (2009 Nobel Laureate), Bruce Tromberg (UC Irvine), and Xiaowei Zhuang (Harvard University). More information will be coming about these and other highlighted presentations in the coming weeks, so be sure not to miss out!