BioPhotonics Conference

During the BioPhotonics Conference, innovators and leading practitioners across the spectrum of the biophotonics landscape will spotlight advancements in system design and biomedical and life sciences application. The online event takes place October 15 to 17 and features sessions from technology developers and scientists from the optics and photonics industry and academic sectors.

Luminary figures as well as startup companies and established players are featured in this year’s program. Sessions will focus on trends in microscopy, imaging, and spectroscopy in specific program tracks. Selected topics include STED microscopy, compact microscopes, tunable femtosecond lasers, broadband spectroscopy, clinical imaging, linear optics, and nonlinear optics.

Keynote speakers discuss methods, assessment in imaging

Three technology tracks, one on each day of the conference, kick off on October 15. Advancements in live-cell imaging and interactions will take center stage.

Afrouz Anderson, a program director at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), begins the conference with her keynote session during the Microscopy track. The talk, titled “Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering,” highlights NIBIB’s partnerships and programs. These initiatives include rapid acceleration of diagnostics (RADx), NIBIB-supported phantom libraries, development of optical imaging phantoms, quantum sensing in biomedical applications, and various training opportunities.

The Spectroscopy track will be keynoted by Christian Huck, professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Innsbruck. Huck will discuss the usefulness of vibrational spectroscopy in bioanalysis due to its tested short analysis times, noninvasiveness, and potential for screening chemical and physical properties simultaneously. This is supported by the popularization of the miniaturization of spectrometers in research and industry.

Closing out the online conference, the Imaging track will feature a keynote presentation from Stephen Boppart, professor and chair in engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, focusing on multimodal imaging in tumor margin assessment. For many surgical oncology procedures, exceedingly high positive margin rates indicate that tumor cells are often left behind in the patient. Boppart and his team are developing a multimodal multiscale approach that uses optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging of the large-area tumor cavity with switchable high-resolution subcellular nonlinear optical imaging (NLOI) for generating real-time digital histopathology images. AI algorithms have been developed to screen incoming OCT images to alert the surgeon to suspicious areas.

Influential names

Returning and first-time presenters will provide the latest updates on existing technologies and introductions to trends in devices and techniques that have been incorporated into ongoing life sciences and clinical research. Aydogan Ozcan will return to present on feature analysis using programmable diffraction with digital neural networks along with Ocean Optics senior product scientist, Derek Guenther, who will speak on using broadband spectroscopy in the detection of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in water. They will be joined by Juliet Gopinath (University of Colorado Boulder) and Charles Lin (Harvard Medical School) in the Microscopy track; Alexis Weber (University at Albany, State University of New York) and Fay Nicolson (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) in the Spectroscopy track; and Mihaela Balu (University of California, Irvine) and Francesco Saverio Pavone (University of Florence) in the Imaging track.

In addition to prominent names in research, representatives from companies such as Hamamatsu Corporation, Ocean Optics, Evident Scientific, Zaber Technologies, Teledyne Princeton Instruments, and Fluence Technologies will discuss innovation in all three tracks.

Register now

Registration for the 2024 BioPhotonics Conference is open now. To reserve your spot and find updates and information, visit www.photonics.com/bpc2024. The webcast will be recorded and available on demand.

Featured keynote speakers (from left) Afrouz Anderson, Christian Huck, Stephen Boppart.