San Francisco, CA--You will find extensive coverage of Photonics West 2012 in the form of articles, blogs, and videos appearing on our website (www.laserfocusworld.com) in the coming days. The event attracted more than 20,000 attendees, while the expo itself included more than 1200 exhibitors. Next year Photonics West will be held from February 2-7, again at Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Here are a few highlights:
- The BiOS Symposium and Exhibition--with 210 exhibitors and many speakers describing advances in diagnostics, clinical technologies, laser-tissue interaction, spectroscopy, microscopy, and imaging. Related work by these three impressive speakers also appears in the linked Laser Focus World articles:
+ Stefan Hell (Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie) described work on the use of super-resolution microscopy for imaging of the living brain.
+ Aydogan Ozcan (University of California, Los Angeles) described the latest work in his lab's development of a portable microscope that uses a cell phone as a wireless platform for transmitting medical data, via a holographic reconstruction imaging method.
+ Guillermo Tearney (Massachusetts General Hospital) told how applications of cardiovascular imaging to pathology are changing the views of the medical community on the cause-and-effect relationship between plaque and thrombosis that may lead to coronary events.
- Good market news from the 24th Annual Lasers & Photonics Marketplace Seminar—run by Laser Focus World, Industrial Laser Solutions, and Strategies Unlimited. Tom Hausken from Strategies Unlimited predicted a solid year for laser sales, but essentially flat in terms of growth from the current record high of about $7 billion/yr. Investments in machine tools and telecom equipment, and strong growth of sales into China, have been keys to the strong recovery. While sales slowed in late 2011 in the uncertain economic climate, the outlook for long-term growth is still strong. Laser sales growth should return in 2013 and reach $9.4 billion by 2015.
- The nine winners of the annual Prism Awards—congratulations to 89 North (Burlington, VT), PD-LD (Pennington, NJ), mplitude Systèmes (Pessac, France), MERMEC (Monopoli Bari, Italy), Optotune (Dietikon, Switzerland), Physical Optics Corporation (Torrance, CA), nanoplus (Gerbrunn, Germany), WITec (Ulm, Germany), OEWaves (Pasadena, CA).