The Biophotonics Congress Will Explore Image Analysis and Wearable Monitoring

The upcoming Biophotonics Congress: Biomedical Optics will feature optical technologies ranging from spectroscopy and endoscopy for the diagnosis of disease to computational pathology and wearable sensors that monitor vital health statistics. The Optica event will run from April 24 to 27 and be held in person at the Westin Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort in Florida, as well as virtually.

Wearable technologies will be a component of the discussion during this year’s BioPhotonics Congress in April, organized by Optica. Courtesy of iStock.com/metamorworks.

A centerpiece of this year’s program will be a panel discussion, between medical experts in the field, on home care portable devices equipped with artificial intelligence. Event organizers said the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shown the importance of such home monitoring devices in the midst of travel restrictions and shortages of clinical staff.

More information about registration can be found at www.optica.org. Masks and proof of COVID-19 vaccination will be required to attend the in-person event.

Rainer Andreas Leitgeb of the Medical University of Vienna and Christine Hendon of Columbia University will chair the event. It is sponsored by Optica, corporate sponsor American Elements, and exhibitor TOPTICA Photonics.

“In 2020, we saw that a virtual platform allowed for increased participation from researchers from all across the globe,” Leitgeb and Hendon said in a joint statement. “We have incorporated knowledge gained from the last two years to put together an engaging hybrid conference with dynamic presenters. We look forward to welcoming our international group of leading engineers, optical and medical scientists, physicians, junior researchers, and graduate students to this year’s conference.”

Plenary speakers will include Laura Marcu of the University of California, Davis; Wolfgang Drexler of the Medical University of Vienna; Daniel Razansky of ETH Zürich; and Anita Mahadevan-Jansen of Vanderbilt University.

Program tracks will cover several key areas of development in biophotonics and biomedical imaging, including:

• Clinical and translational biophotonics, with sessions ranging from the clinical applications of OCT to the translation of a needle-based Raman probe for assessment of cancer margins.

• Microscopy histopathology and analytics, with sessions ranging from noninvasive blood analysis with deep learning to laser safety for photoacoustic-guided surgery.

• Optical coherence tomography, with sessions ranging from advancements in time-domain full-field OCT for ophthalmology to multifunctional OCT endoscopy.

• OCT and spectroscopy, with sessions ranging from NIR spectroscopy and neonatal studies to laser speckle contrast imaging for intraoperative blood flow visualization.

• Optics and the brain, with sessions ranging from the high-speed voltage imaging analysis of biological neural networks to metabolic neuromonitoring with optics.

Leitgeb and Hendon said the panel discussion titled “The Physicians’ Perspective: A Joint MHA and Translational Session,” to be presented on Sunday, April 24, will likely generate considerable interest. The discussion will focus on the direct impact of microscopy and other technologies in the clinic. Topics will include the clinical application of OCT as it relates to gastroenterology, optical skin biopsy with line-field confocal OCT, and the clinician’s perspective on optical imaging in patient care.

The panel will be moderated by Eric Tkaczyk of Vanderbilt University and Milind Rajadhyaksha of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.