Fibrotic interstitial lung diseases (fILD), such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), are characterized by abnormal collagen deposition. Assessment of collagen fiber orientation could serve as a biomarker for prognosis and therapeutic responsiveness. Endobronchial optical coherence tomography (EB-OCT) is a bronchoscope-compatible imaging modality that provides volumetric visualization of large tissue volume with microscopic resolution. Polarization-sensitive EB-OCT (PS-EB-OCT) additionally detects endogenous birefringence from organized tissue such as collagen. We previously evaluated PS-EB-OCT for in-vivo microscopic visualization of birefringent fibrosis in fILDs. Here, we further investigate depth-resolved optic-axis (OA) orientation mapping to assess localized collagen fiber orientation in fILDs in-vivo.

Jaeyul Lee is a postdoctoral research fellow in Dr. Lida Hariri’s group at Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He received the Ph.D. degree in School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering from Kyungpook National University, Daegu, South Korea, in February 2021. Then, he started his first postdoc position at Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Los Angeles, for a year. His research interests are in the development of functional optical imaging techniques, including optical coherence tomography, photoacoustic microscopy,spectroscopy, and their biomedical pulmonary applications.

Solid tumors face the challenge of hypoxia, stemming from an imbalance between oxygen demands and supply. Hypoxia leads to resistance to conventional cancer therapies, such as radiation and chemotherapy, including photodynamic therapy (PDT) which relies on oxygen radicals. To address this challenge, we developed perfluorocarbon nanodroplets for co-delivering oxygen and a photosensitizer. We validated oxygen release and enhanced tumor oxygenation in both in vitro and in vivo models. Histological analysis confirmed reduced hypoxic regions in nanodroplets-treated tumors while PDT using the same resulted in superior efficacy compared to a liposomal formulation. Overall, oxygen-loaded nanodroplets guided by photoacoustic imaging offer a promising approach for treatment of hypoxic tumors.

Marvin Xavierselvan is a 4th year Ph.D. student at Tufts university’s integrated Biofunctional Imaging and Therapeutics (iBIT) lab. He has experience in designing biomedical instrumentation, photoacoustic imaging, and photodynamic therapy (PDT). His research focuses on photoacoustic imaging and photodynamic therapy to combat resistant tumors. His scientific interests span photoacoustic imaging, image-guided PDT in head and neck, and pancreatic cancer. His Ph.D. thesis aims to enhance PDT efficacy through nanoplatforms, addressing tumor hypoxia and enabling combination therapies with oxygen delivery.

We demonstrate a unique application of an unconventional mode of optical manipulation, radiation pressure from a low-numerical aperture beam, to address the need in the field of mechanobiology for quantitative imaging of extracellular matrix (ECM) mechanics at cellular resolution. Photonic force optical coherence elastography (PF-OCE) utilizes harmonically-modulated radiation pressure to locally “push” on individual microbeads embedded in the ECM. Amount to a few piconewtons, the radiation pressure force induces sub-nanometer bead displacements, demanding state-of-the-art interferometric detection provided by phase-sensitive optical coherence tomography.We validate PF-OCE against shear rheometry in polyacrylamide hydrogels, then, demonstrate micromechanical imaging in 3D ECM-derived hydrogels.

Nichaluk Leartprapun is a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Seemantini Nadkarni at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital. Her current research focuses on the development and applications of laser Speckle rHEologicAl micRoscopy (SHEAR) technology to characterize micromechanical properties of tissues, biofluids, and engineered biomaterials. Prior to joining Wellman, she completed her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Steven Adie at Cornell University, where she developed imaging technologies based on optical coherence tomography and elastography for micromechanical and structural imaging of biological systems.

With the direct detection of gravitational waves from coalescing pairs of binary black holes and neutron stars, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) has successfully measured strains smaller than 1 part in 10^21. Although this incredible achievement makes LIGO one of the most sensitive experiments ever created, there is still room to improve. One of the strongest limits placed on LIGO’s sensitivity comes from the optical coatings used to make the mirrors of the interferometer. In this talk, I will describe gravitational waves and LIGO, optical coatings and how to test them, and some ideas for future improvements.

Nicholas is a physics graduate student at MIT, where he is engaged in research at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Laboratory. His work on optical coatings aims to address fundamental limitations to LIGO’s sensitivity. During his time at MIT, he has been honored with the Barish-Weiss Fellowship and the MathWorks Science Fellowship. A Southern California native, Nicholas completed his undergraduate physics degree at California State University, Fullerton, where he worked on simulations of merging binary black holes as part of the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) collaboration.

Reconstructed depth-resolved optic axis orientation obtained by catheter based PSOCT in a tissue volume informs on the orientation of the white matter fiber bundles in the brain, owing to the birefringence of myelinated axons. The physical organization of white matter also leads to anisotropic diffusion of water molecules, which is the basis of dMRI for non-invasive imaging of the three-dimensional orientation of white matter fiber bundles. Having access to fiber orientation in both imaging modalities, we are trying to map the depth-resolved birefringence and optic axis orientation to the larger scale dMRI as well as an atlas of brain anatomy.

Shadi is a Fourth year Ph.D. student in Biophotonics at CERVO brain research center, Quebec City, Canada. In collaboration with Prof. Martin Villiger at Wellman Center for Photomedicine,she is using Polarization Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography (PS-OCT) as a tool for neurosurgical guidance.To do so, she is working on both PS-OCT processing development and mapping PS-OCT to diffusion MRI of the brain. She obtained the B.Sc. in Physics and the M.Sc. in Photonics where she worked on diffuse reflectance spectroscopy of skin.

Miniaturized head-mounted fluorescence imaging platforms, known as miniscopes, push fundamental neuroscience by monitoring real time neural activity in freely behaving animals. However, these platforms inherently exhibit a shallow depth of field due to the use of highly aberrated off-the-shelf optics, 1-photon excitation and a compact form factor. This talk will explore the use of pupil engineering, computationally efficient physical modeling and optimization to enable a computational miniscope entitled EDoF-Miniscope, which integrates a computational imaging paradigm to push the imaging volume within the brain by leveraging a scattering-robust extended depth of field.

Joseph Greene is a 5th year PhD candidate in the Computational Imaging Systems Lab at Boston University with the support of the NSF Neurophotonics Research Trainee: Understanding the Brain and BUnano Cross-Disciplinary fellowships. He specializes in the computational design, manufacturing and integration of custom optics to push the imaging capacity of miniaturized imaging platforms in the brain. Outside the lab, Joe is an avid volunteer in IEEE-HKN where he currently develops programming and resources for graduate students on an international scale.

In a human brain 200 billion cells work together shaping who we are. Grasping their complex organization by microscopic imaging of a whole human brain has not been achieved yet due to its sheer size and insufficient throughput of conventional imaging systems. Here, we present a complete imaging and analysis pipeline developed specifically to achieve high-throughput, multispectral imaging of entire, optically cleared and immunolabelled human brains at cellular resolution for cell-type atlasing. Our human brain optimized light-sheet (HOLiS) microscope is an oblique-plane single objective light-sheet system capable of imaging whole human brains with 5 spectral channels in < 2 weeks/brain.

Malte Johannes Casper, M.Sc., is a doctoral candidate at Elizabeth Hillman’s lab at Columbia University. He received his B.Sc. degree in medical computer science from the University of Lübeck in 2014 and his M.Sc. degree in medical engineering science in 2017. During his master’s studies and beyond he visited the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston working on the dermatological application of optical coherence tomography (OCT). Starting his doctoral studies at Columbia University in 2018 he has been working on SCAPE microscopy (Swept confocally-aligned planar excitation) and its application to high-throughput, large tissue imaging.

Autonomic control of cardiac function is essential for survival, yet the functional diversity of the autonomic sensory and motor circuits of the heart remains poorly understood. Here we take a multidisciplinary approach, combining systems neuroscience techniques, genetics, and control theory to study the role of autonomic sensory and motor circuits in larval zebrafish. While larval zebrafish’s optic and genetic accessibility has made it a popular choice for studying how the brain processes environmental cues to modulate behavior, it has not yet been used to study organ control or the autonomic nervous system (ANS) from a systems neuroscience perspective. Thus, we use calcium imaging, optogenetics, pharmacology, and electron microscopy to map the developmental time course of anatomical and functional innervation of the heart. We identify the emergence of parasympathetic and sympathetic control of the heart, as well as the anatomically defined neural populations needed for heart modulation. We also show the onset of cardiac sensing and cardiac state feedback to the brain. Our study provides a timeline of developmental landmarks of the autonomic circuits for heart control and sets the stage for future mechanistic studies of neurocardiac circuits.

Luis Hernandez-Nunez is a Warren Alpert Distinguished Scholar, a Branco Weiss fellow, and a Life Sciences Research Foundation (LSRF) postdoctoral fellow at the laboratories of Florian Engert and Mark Fishman at Harvard University. Luis is also a visiting scientist at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus. Luis’ research is focused on the circuit mechanisms for heart-brain interactions in zebrafish. Luis has also been awarded a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface to support his transition to junior faculty. Luis obtained his Ph.D. in systems biology from Harvard in 2020. He conducted his doctoral research in Aravinthan Samuel’s lab, where he discovered molecules, cells, and circuits that mediate thermal homeostasis in larval Drosophila. Before graduate school, Luis was an undergraduate and then a postbac researcher at Thierry Emonet’s lab at Yale University. Prior to moving to the U.S., Luis studied mechatronics engineering at the National University of Engineering in Peru.