Novel, state-of-the-art optical biopsy approaches focus of conference

May 7, 2009--The conference on optical biopsy will make a comeback at the Biomedical Optics Symposium (BiOS) during Photonics West 2010, and conference leaders welcome proposals by July 13. The conference aims to present innovative work in non-invasive spectroscopic methods to detect the onset and progression of disease. It will cover a wide array of established techniques and novel approaches to diagnose tissues changes including in vivo and ex vivo fluorescence spectroscopy, spectral imaging, Raman spectroscopy and photonic methods to modify the tissue properties or functions in both research and clinical applications.

The conference will discuss the differences in optical signatures of normal and diseased tissues. It will explore the underlying biochemical and structural changes of tissues and cells responsible for the observed spectroscopic signatures, and tissue response to external conditions such as therapeutic intervention, unintended injury, and laser energy deposition.

Compact smart spectral explorers, multi–spectral imagers and hyperspectral imaging will be highlighted and covered in part with invited speakers.

Among specific topics, the conference leadership would like to cover methods such as fluorescence, phosphorescence, excitation, absorption, THz, Raman, and Stokes shift spectroscopy; fluorescence, polarization spectral, and nano-scale (e.g., STED) imaging; near infrared diagnostic and diffusive reflectance methods; inelastic light scattering; time resolved techniques; and nonlinear optical biopsy mapping. Other possible topics are origin of tissue optical properties; instrumentation for in-vivo optical biopsy; video spectral imaging and mapping of tissue; cell smears spectroscopy; physiological state of tissue; chemo- and molecular targeting agents; spectroscopy with micro-endoscopes; and nanoparticle tagging.Supercontuum lasers for medical and biological work is another area of interest, as arestimulated Raman Gain spectroscopy, noninvasive diabetes detection, speckle spectroscopy for diagnoses, andtime reversal techniques. Finally, the organizers also wish to discuss work in tissue modification with light pulses, laser tissue welding, and dynamics of laser-tissue interaction.

Besides Conference chair Robert R. Alfano of City College/CUNY and co-chair Stavros G. Demos of Lawrence Livermore National Lab, the program committee consists of Amir H. Gandjbakhche, National Institutes of Health (United States); Israel Gannot,
The George Washington University (United States) and Tel Aviv University (Israel); Michael S. Feld, MIT (United States), Richard B. Rosen, The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary (United States); Urs Utzinger, The University of Arizona (United States); Wubao B. Wang, City College/CUNY (United States); Britton Chance, University of Pennsylvania (United States); Masood Siddique, City College/CUNY (United States); Stefan Andersson, Lund University (Sweden); Webb W. Watt, Cornell University (United States); and Christoper H. Contag, Stanford University (United States).

The abstract deadline is July 13, and the manuscript due date is December 28, 2009. BiOS/Photonics West 2010 will take place January 23-28 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA.

Get more information on the conference, and follow a link to submit an abstract, at the Optical Biopsy session page at the SPIE site, or contact Kestutis Sutkus
at the CUNY Institute for Ultrafast Spectroscopy and Lasers.

Posted by Barbara G. Goode, [email protected], for Laser Focus World.