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/ Events

Making light work: illuminating the future of biomedical optics

08 - 10 November 2010 12:00 - 13:45

 

Organised by Professor Clare Elwell, Professor Jeremy Hebden, Professor Paul Beard, Professor Elizabeth Hillman and Professor Chris Cooper

The purpose of this meeting is to exploit the recent surge of interest in the development of new diagnostic optical technologies to explore their future transition from benchtop prototypes to routine use in the clinical and life sciences. It will bring together a highly interdisciplinary group of scientists working towards a new generation of monitoring and imaging techniques.

Download the programme here (PDF).

The proceedings of this meeting are scheduled to be published in a future issues of Philosophical Transactions A.

Audio recordings and biographies are available below.

Organisers

  • Professor Jeremy Hebden, University College London, UK

    After obtaining a PhD in astronomy and spending two years in Arizona exploring high resolution methods for mapping stellar atmospheres, I spent five years at the University of Utah investigating new optical imaging techniques for functional imaging of human tissues. I pioneered the experimental development of time-resolved methods which overcome the blurring effects of scatter. A Wellcome Trust Senior Fellowship enabled me to establish a group at UCL devoted to the development of clinical prototypes for optical imaging of human subjects, with particular emphasis on the study of the premature infant brain at risk of damage resulting from hypoxia-ischaemia. My group has developed a time-resolved instrument for three-dimensional optical tomography, utilising unique source and detector technology. It has been used to produce the first whole-brain images of evoked functional activity in the newborn infant, and this work is now focussed on the study of seizure. In addition, we have built systems for mapping the haemodynamic response in the cortex to sensory stimulation and other cognitive activity, and to acquire EEG measurements simultaneously. I currently hold the appointment of Professor of Biomedical Optics, and was appointed Head of the Department of Medical Physics & Bioengineering at UCL in 2008. 

  • Professor Paul Beard, University College London, UK

    Paul Beard obtained a BSc in Physics at UCL in 1987. Following a period at Marconi Underwater Systems Ltd developing passive fibre optic sonar arrays he returned to UCL and was awarded a PhD in photoacoustic spectroscopy in 1996. He is currently Professor of Biomedical Photoacoustics in the Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering, UCL and holds an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship. His research interests lie in optical ultrasound detection, light transport and acoustic propagation modeling, quantitative photoacoustic image reconstruction, spectroscopic inversion methods and ultrasound metrology. 

  • Professor Elizabeth Hillman, Columbia University, USA

    Dr Elizabeth Hillman is Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology and a member of the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and Kavli Institute for Brain Science at Columbia University. Dr Hillman received her undergraduate training in Physics and PhD in Medical Physics and Bioengineering at University College London. She was a post-doctoral fellow and then junior faculty at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School before joining Columbia University in 2006. Dr Hillman’s research program focuses on understanding the mechanisms of functional neurovascular coupling in the brain. Her lab also specializes in the design and development of novel optical imaging and microscopy techniques for capturing structure and function in the living brain.

  • Professor Clare Elwell, University College London, UK

    Clare Elwell is Professor of Medical Physics in the Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering, University College London (UCL). She obtained her BSc in Physics with Medical Physics in 1988 from the University of Exeter, where she also completed her MPhil (1991) whilst working as a Clinical Physicist running urodynamics, respiratory function and sleep studies. Following a move to UCL she completed a PhD in 1995 investigating the application of near infrared spectroscopy to measurements of cerebral haemodynamics in adults. She now leads the Near Infrared Spectroscopy Research Group in the Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory at UCL and holds honorary positions at University College London Hospital and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.

    Professor Elwell’s research focus is on advanced instrumentation development, improved data analysis methods and application of near infrared spectroscopy technologies in the clinical and life sciences. Her current research projects include multimodal monitoring of adult patients with traumatic brain injury, application of optical topography to monitor cerebral haemodynamics in children undergoing cardiothoracic procedures, development of mathematical models of cerebral physiology to aid data interpretation and the investigation of functional activation in the developing brain.

    She is an Executive Committee Member of the International Society on Oxygen Transport to Tissue.