Biophotonics Australasia 2016

Talks on neurophotonics, lightsheet imaging, endoscopic optical coherence tomography (OCT), and other applications of light in biological systems will be featured at three plenary sessions during SPIE Biophotonics Australasia in Australia, 16-19 October.

Six innovators from four countries will present their research on biophotonics for diagnostics and treatment at the sessions during the week. SPIE Biophotonics Australasia will also have two poster sessions, a session on research and industry, and more than 130 presentations in conference tracks for biophotonics, medical imaging, and fiber-optic sensing.

The event at the Adelaide Convention Centre is a chance for scientists in academia, government, and business to share the latest research in advanced medical imaging, fiber-optic sensors, neurophotonics, microscopy, fluorescent nanomaterials, OCT, and related topics.

Three leading researchers in the area of brain function are among the plenary speakers, including brain mapper George Paxinos of the Neuroscience Research Australia Institute and University of New South Wales; Yves De Koninck of Laval University and the Québec Mental Health Institute (Canada); and Chris Xu of the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University (USA).

Paxinos, who developed the first comprehensive nomenclature for human, bird, and developing mammals’ brains, will discuss his research on the brains of humans and experimental animals. He is a coauthor of The Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates, a 1982 book that has become one of the most cited books in science, and he is now producing an electronic atlas of the human brainstem, combining MRI and histological images.

De Koninck’s talk will cover techniques to decode molecular interactions at brain synapses and to probe and control cellular and molecular events. De Koninck has developed fluorescence fluctuation-analysis techniques that yield measurements of densities and oligomerization states from tissue samples with previously unachieved precision, and he has pioneered multimodal fiber-optics-based tools to access hard-to-reach areas of the nervous system.

Xu will discuss new technologies for in vivo structural and functional imaging of the mouse brain using long wavelength excitation and three-photon microscopy and the requirements for imaging in other animals the dynamic neuronal activity at the cellular level over a large area and depth.

Other plenary speakers are:

• SPIE member Richard Levenson of University of California, Davis Medical Center (USA), who will discuss microscopy with ultraviolet surface excitation (MUSE), an approach for acquiring high-quality histological images from unsectioned thick tissue.
• Rainer Heintzmann of Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology and the Institute of Physical Chemistry (Germany), who will present two recently developed modes of lightsheet imaging for biomedical research and clinical diagnostics.
• Brett Bouma of Harvard Medical School (USA), who will discuss advances for imaging tissue composition and microstructures with endoscopic OCT.

In addition to the plenary sessions, a session on Tuesday will be devoted to a discussion of biophotonics in industry and research. SPIE Fellow Jürgen Popp, scientific director at the Leibniz Institute, and Tanya Monro, chair of photonics at University of Adelaide, will chair this session.

Symposium chairs for SPIE Biophotonics Australasia are Mark R. Hutchinson, director of the Australian Center for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP) and professor at University of Adelaide, and SPIE member Ewa M. Goldys, a professor at Macquarie University (Australia) and deputy director of the center.

More information about SPIE Biophotonics Australasia. 

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