Search

Despite widespread government and public interest, there are significant barriers to translating basic science discoveries into clinical practice. Biophotonics and biomedical optics technologies can be used to overcome many of these hurdles, due, in part, to offering new portable, bedside, and accessible devices. The current JBO special issue highlights promising activities and examples of translational biophotonics from leading laboratories around the world. We identify common essential features of successful clinical translation by examining the origins and activities of three major international academic affiliated centers with beginnings traceable to the mid-late 1970s: The Wellman Center for Photomedicine (Mass General Hospital, USA), the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic (University of California, Irvine, USA), and the Medical Laser Center Lübeck at the University of Lübeck, Germany. Major factors driving the success of these programs include visionary founders and leadership, multidisciplinary research and training activities in light-based therapies and diagnostics, diverse funding portfolios, and a thriving entrepreneurial culture that tolerates risk. We provide a brief review of how these three programs emerged and highlight critical phases and lessons learned. Based on these observations, we identify pathways for encouraging the growth and formation of similar programs in order to more rapidly and effectively expand the impact of biophotonics and biomedical optics on human health.

Despite widespread government and public interest, there are significant barriers to translating basic science discoveries into clinical practice. Biophotonics and biomedical optics technologies can be used to overcome many of these hurdles, due, in part, to offering new portable, bedside, and accessible devices. The current JBO special issue highlights promising activities and examples of translational biophotonics from leading laboratories around the world. We identify common essential features of successful clinical translation by examining the origins and activities of three major international academic affiliated centers with beginnings traceable to the mid-late 1970s: The Wellman Center for Photomedicine (Mass General Hospital, USA), the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic (University of California, Irvine, USA), and the Medical Laser Center Lübeck at the University of Lübeck, Germany. Major factors driving the success of these programs include visionary founders and leadership, multidisciplinary research and training activities in light-based therapies and diagnostics, diverse funding portfolios, and a thriving entrepreneurial culture that tolerates risk. We provide a brief review of how these three programs emerged and highlight critical phases and lessons learned. Based on these observations, we identify pathways for encouraging the growth and formation of similar programs in order to more rapidly and effectively expand the impact of biophotonics and biomedical optics on human health.

Despite widespread government and public interest, there are significant barriers to translating basic science discoveries into clinical practice. Biophotonics and biomedical optics technologies can be used to overcome many of these hurdles, due, in part, to offering new portable, bedside, and accessible devices. The current JBO special issue highlights promising activities and examples of translational biophotonics from leading laboratories around the world. We identify common essential features of successful clinical translation by examining the origins and activities of three major international academic affiliated centers with beginnings traceable to the mid-late 1970s: The Wellman Center for Photomedicine (Mass General Hospital, USA), the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic (University of California, Irvine, USA), and the Medical Laser Center Lübeck at the University of Lübeck, Germany. Major factors driving the success of these programs include visionary founders and leadership, multidisciplinary research and training activities in light-based therapies and diagnostics, diverse funding portfolios, and a thriving entrepreneurial culture that tolerates risk. We provide a brief review of how these three programs emerged and highlight critical phases and lessons learned. Based on these observations, we identify pathways for encouraging the growth and formation of similar programs in order to more rapidly and effectively expand the impact of biophotonics and biomedical optics on human health.

Oxygen plays an important role in wound healing, as it is essential to biological functions such as cell proliferation, immune responses and collagen synthesis. Poor oxygenation is directly associated with the development of chronic ischemic wounds, which affect more than 6 million people each year in the United States alone at an estimated cost of $25 billion. Knowledge of oxygenation status is also important in the management of burns and skin grafts, as well as in a wide range of skin conditions. Despite the importance of the clinical determination of tissue oxygenation, there is a lack of rapid, user-friendly and quantitative diagnostic tools that allow for non-disruptive, continuous monitoring of oxygen content across large areas of skin and wounds to guide care and therapeutic decisions. In this work, we describe a sensitive, colorimetric, oxygen-sensing paint-on bandage for two-dimensional mapping of tissue oxygenation in skin, burns, and skin grafts. By embedding both an oxygensensing porphyrin-dendrimer phosphor and a reference dye in a liquid bandage matrix, we have created a liquid bandage that can be painted onto the skin surface and dries into a thin film that adheres tightly to the skin or wound topology. When captured by a camera-based imaging device, the oxygen-dependent phosphorescence emission of the bandage can be used to quantify and map both the pO2 and oxygen consumption of the underlying tissue. In this proof-of-principle study, we first demonstrate our system on a rat ischemic limb model to show its capabilities in sensing tissue ischemia. It is then tested on both ex vivo and in vivo porcine burn models to monitor the progression of burn injuries. Lastly, the bandage is applied to an in vivo porcine graft model for monitoring the integration of full- and partial thickness skin grafts., Published in Biomedical Optics Express, v5 n11 p3748-3764, 1 Oct 2014.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been increasingly used for imaging pulmonary alveoli. Only a few studies, however, have quantified individual alveolar areas, and the validity of alveolar volumes represented within OCT images has not been shown. To validate quantitative measurements of alveoli from OCT images, we compared the cross-sectional area, perimeter, volume, and surface area of matched subpleural alveoli from microcomputed tomography (micro-CT) and OCT images of fixed air-filled swine samples. The relative change in size between different alveoli was extremely well correlated (r > 0.9, P < 0.0001), but OCT images underestimated absolute sizes compared to micro-CT by 27% (area), 7% (perimeter), 46% (volume), and 25% (surface area) on average. We hypothesized that the differences resulted from refraction at the tissue–air interfaces and developed a ray-tracing model that approximates the reconstructed alveolar size within OCT images. Using this model and OCT measurements of the refractive index for lung tissue (1.41 for fresh, 1.53 for fixed), we derived equations to obtain absolute size measurements of superellipse and circular alveoli with the use of predictive correction factors. These methods and results should enable the quantification of alveolar sizes from OCT images in vivo.

Contains table of contents for Section 3 and reports on eighteen research projects., Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/MIT Lincoln Laboratory Contract MDA972-92-J-1038, Joint Services Electronics Program Grant DAAH04-95-1-0038, National Science Foundation Grant ECS 94-23737, U.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific Research Contract F49620-95-1-0221, U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-95-1-0715, MIT Center for Material Science and Engineering, National Center for Integrated Photonics Technology Contract DMR 94-00334, National Center for Integrated Photonics Technology, U.S. Navy - Office of Naval Research (MFEL) Contract N00014-94-1-0717, National Institutes of Health Grant 9-R01-EY11289, MIT Lincoln Laboratory Contract BX-5098, Electric Power Research Institute Contract RP3170-25, ENECO

A new instrument for simultaneous display of an en-face optical coherence tomography (OCT) image and of a confocal image (similar with that produced by the scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO)) for the retina in vivo is demonstrated. The system is based on a fiberised OCT configuration, where a separate bulk optical confocal receiver is introduced between the transversal galvanometer scanner and the OCT fiber arm. Criteria for presenting the two images are discussed. These address the resulting impact on the quality of each image as result of differences in the two imaging techniques, low coherence interferometry and confocal imaging. The transversal and depth pixel size are governed by different principles and consequently are generally different. Additionally, the OCT image is disturbed by Doppler shifts introduced by the transversal scanning and speckle.

A new instrument for simultaneous display of an en-face optical coherence tomography (OCT) image and of a confocal image (similar with that produced by the scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO)) for the retina in vivo is demonstrated. The system is based on a fiberised OCT configuration, where a separate bulk optical confocal receiver is introduced between the transversal galvanometer scanner and the OCT fiber arm. Criteria for presenting the two images are discussed. These address the resulting impact on the quality of each image as result of differences in the two imaging techniques, low coherence interferometry and confocal imaging. The transversal and depth pixel size are governed by different principles and consequently are generally different. Additionally, the OCT image is disturbed by Doppler shifts introduced by the transversal scanning and speckle.

A new instrument for simultaneous display of an en-face optical coherence tomography (OCT) image and of a confocal image (similar with that produced by the scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO)) for the retina in vivo is demonstrated. The system is based on a fiberised OCT configuration, where a separate bulk optical confocal receiver is introduced between the transversal galvanometer scanner and the OCT fiber arm. Criteria for presenting the two images are discussed. These address the resulting impact on the quality of each image as result of differences in the two imaging techniques, low coherence interferometry and confocal imaging. The transversal and depth pixel size are governed by different principles and consequently are generally different. Additionally, the OCT image is disturbed by Doppler shifts introduced by the transversal scanning and speckle.

Recent studies have shown spray cooling of the skin surface with millisecond cryogen spurts to be an effective method for protecting the epidermis from non-specific thermal injury during various laser mediated dermatological procedures. We have investigated the effects of ambient humidity level, spraying distance, and cryogen boiling point on the resulting radiometric surface temperature. Our findings indicate that: 1) decreasing the ambient humidity level results in less ice formation on the skin surface without altering the radiometric surface temperature during a cryogen spurt; 2) increasing the spraying distance to 85 mm lowers the radiometric surface temperature; and 3) boiling point of the cryogen does not directly affect the surface temperature in the geometries studied.