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!
No comments:
Post a Comment