Optical coherence elastography measures elasticity. Wave-based elastography leverages the properties of shear waves traveling through tissue primarily to infer shear modulus. These methods have seen significant development over the past decade; however, existing implementations in OCT require robust synchronization of shear wave excitation with imaging, complicating widespread clinical adoption. We present a method for complete recovery of the harmonic shear wave field in an asynchronous, conventional frame-rate, raster-scanning OCT system by modeling raster-scanning as an amplitude modulation of the displacement field. This technique recovers the entire spatially and temporally coherent complex-valued shear wave field from just two B-scans, while reducing the time scale for sensitivity to motion from minutes to tens of milliseconds. To the best of our knowledge, this work represents the first successful demonstration of reverberant elastography on a human subject in vivo with a conventional frame-rate, raster-scanning OCT system, greatly expanding opportunity for widespread translation.

Ginger Schmidt is graduate student researcher in the Center for Biomedical OCT Research and Translation (CBORT) within the Wellman Center for Photomedicine. She is studying Medical Engineering & Medical Physics through the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) PhD program. She is developing signal processing methods and hardware solutions to enable tissue elasticity measurements in vivo with elastography. Prior to her graduate studies, she studied engineering at Harvey Mudd College.

Polarimetry is emerging as a promising label-free cancer detection/imaging approach via its sensitivity to micro/macro structural changes during tumor development. Polarimetry currently lacks the specificity to yield diagnoses, however, it can be performed rapidly in a wide field-of-view. Thus it can instead be used to guide more sensitive but slower diagnostic tools to regions of interest thereby shortening their acquisition times. Our recent study employs wide-field polarimetric image guidance to target regions of interest on thick ex-vivo human breast to optimize mass spectrometry analysis. We also explore polarimetric contrast between cancerous and healthy tissue on the resected human breast specimens as well as on live pancreatic adenocarcinoma bearing mice.

Michael is a 5th year PhD student in Dr. Alex Vitkin’s laboratory as part of the Applied Biophotonics Division of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. Michael completed his Bachelors degree in physics, and a Masters thesis on femtosecond laser-matter dynamics for molecular imaging and material ablation applications. Michael’s PhD studies focus on polarized light scattering dynamics in heterogenous media to advance the science of polarimetry into the biomedical domain. His recent research explores the use of polarimetric imaging as a potential tool to guide (1) mass spectrometric probing for optimized tissue diagnostics and (2) surgical resection of tumors.

Fluorescent markers can make surgery more specific by enhancing contrast during tissue resection in certain types of disease. Pressure-Enhanced Sensing of Tissue Oxygenation (PRESTO) uses a commonly available human precursor molecule, 5-Aminolevulinic Acid, to stimulate immediate fluorescence when there is hypoxia present. This pre-contrast agent is metabolized into heme in most human cells, but produces a red fluorescent molecule, protoporphyrin IX, as an intermediate contrast agent. PpIX’s delayed fluorescence is amplified in low oxygen environment of tissue. PRESTO contrast can be used through tissue palpation, leading to contrast greater than 5 in pancreatic, brain, ovarian and head & neck tumors. PRESTO imaging is the first real-time widefield acquisition of palpation response in vivo, making it a valuable tool for highlighting hypoxic tissues and guiding oncologic surgical resection.

Arthur earned his Master’s degree in Photonics and Medical Engineering from the University of Strasbourg, France, in 2018, where he collaborated with Prof. Sylvain Gioux on developing digital holography methods for in vivo tissue imaging. He joined Brian Pogue’s lab at Dartmouth College in 2019, completing his Ph.D. in early 2023 with a focus on time-domain imaging of tissue metabolism. Currently, Arthur is a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Bruza’s lab at Dartmouth College. His research interests include fluorescence imaging, oximetry, fluorescence-guided surgery, and FLASH radiation therapy.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are the main facilitators of hematogenous metastasis. Our lab has developed a technique called ‘diffuse in vivo flow cytometry’ (DiFC) to non-invasively optically detect and enumerate CTCs from the tissue surface. Here, we report on combining DiFC with clinical stage fluorescent molecular contrast agents for the labeling and detection of CTCs in mice.

Josh Pace is a fifth-year graduate student pursing his Ph.D. in Bioengineering with a focus in biomedical optics at Northeastern University. Under the guidance of Mark Niedre, his research is focusing on the fluorescent detection of circulating tumor cells directly in the blood of mice. He received a B.Sc. Degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Arizona in 2019.

Breast cancer incidence is increasing yearly in the United States. This increased incidence necessitates the fast and accurate triaging of specimens for pathological examination. If data are acquired quickly, optical coherence tomography (OCT) has the potential to impact breast pathology. Recovering undersampled volumes with compressed sensing (CS) can allow for faster acquisition. In this talk, I will discuss the CS reconstruction of human breast OCT volumes and the diagnostic accuracy of these volumes.

Arielle S. Joasil is a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Electrical Engineering Department at Columbia University. She works with Dr. Christine P. Hendon in the Structure Function Imaging Laboratory, where she applies machine learning and image processing techniques to detect disease in optical coherence tomography volumes of the breast and aid the breast pathology process.

Conventional neuropathological evaluations, whether for research or clinical diagnosis, are time-intensive and heavily reliant on expert interpretation, often leading to significant variability in results. This subjectivity underscores the need for more precise and efficient approaches. Here, we introduce NeuroPath, the first foundation model designed specifically for neuropathology. By leveraging digital neuropathology WSI database at the Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC), NeuroPath aims to transform the analysis of diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and other NDs. NeuroPath is developed using DINOv2 self-supervised learning (SSL) techniques and its performance is further evaluated through slide-level neuropathological tasks using attention-based multiple instance learning, including predictions of CTE staging. Our approach offers enhanced accuracy and reliability for analyzing complex neuropathological data and can potentially transform the field of digital neuropathology, facilitating faster, more accurate, and predictive assessments that could revolutionize our understanding and treatment of NDs.

Shuying Li is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Boston University. She earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. Her research integrates artificial intelligence (AI) with biophotonics, focusing on leveraging advanced AI tools to enhance optical imaging techniques for improved diagnostic precision and deeper insights into disease mechanisms. In her current role, she applies AI algorithms to human brain images captured by Polarization-Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography (PS-OCT), Quantitative Birefringence Microscopy (qBRM), and neuropathological slides, striving to unlock new dimensions of neurodegenerative disease understanding.

Computational biophotonics combines optical imaging systems and software algorithms to measure quantitative, diagnostic information from imaged tissue. I will present our research in developing and translating computational biophotonics technologies for a variety of important healthcare needs, including (1) preventing colorectal cancer with a computational colonoscope and deep learning, (2) detecting cather-associated urinary tract infections with lens-free holographic imaging, and (3) increasing access to eye care in low-resource settings with a low-cost, handheld wavefront aberrometer.

Taylor Bobrow is a Malone Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University. He completed his BS in electrical engineering at Old Dominion University in 2017 and received his PhD in biomedical engineering from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2024. His current research is focused on using computational imaging to enable low-cost, continuous point-of-care monitoring with applications such as the prevention of hospital-acquired infections.

The definitive toolkit for doctoral students in engineering on thesis—and journal article—preparation, project (and stress) management, IP protection, collaborations, and other aspects of the PhD journey.
It shouldn’t take a PhD to get a PhD, but sometimes the process can seem that confusing—even though, to the mentors and advisors, so obvious that it goes without saying. For doctoral students in engineering confronting this dilemma, Caroline Boudoux, an accomplished researcher and entrepreneur, provides a demystifying guide to the challenges—daunting, seemingly routine, and at times unexpected—of pursuing a PhD in this demanding field. In It Goes without Saying, Boudoux marshals her considerable experience mentoring graduate students, teaching doctoral workshops, and—not so long ago—earning her own PhD at MIT to give PhD candidates the know-how, and the confidence, to succeed.

Caroline Boudoux is Professor of Engineering Physics at Polytechnique Montréal and Cofounder and Copresident at Castor Optics, a company commercializing a new line of double-clad fibers couplers. She is on the Board of Meetings for OPTICA, is a Fellow of SPIE, and a Fulbright scholar. Prof. Boudoux obtained her PhD from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program (USA) and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Ecole Polytechnique (France) before starting her laboratory, in 2007, at Polytechnique Montreal (Canada). Her research topics range from laser-tissue interactions to novel instruments for biomedical imaging.