31 Mar 2015 – Christian, a second-year PhD student in the MTI lab, was selected to receive a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program award.  NSF received over 16,000 applications and gave out only 2,000 awards.  Congratulations Christian!

The MTI lab recently participated in projects that resulted in three papers accepted for publication:

1) Dr. Adrien Ponticorvo, a Postdoctoral Scholar in Dr. Tony Durkin’s lab, is first author on “Quantitative assessment of graded burn wounds in a porcine model using spatial frequency domain imaging (SFDI) and laser speckle imaging (LSI)”, a paper that was accepted on 8 Sep 2014 for publication in Biomedical Optics Express.  The work was in collaboration with MTI lab members Drs. Bruce Yang and Bernard Choi, and the United States Army Institute of Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio, TX (Drs. David Burmeister and Bob Christy).  Congratulations all!  [pdf]

2) Dr. Julio Ramirez-San-Juan, a Scientist at Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE) in Puebla, Mexico, is first author on “Spatial versus temporal laser speckle contrast analysis in the presence of static optical scatterers”, a paper that was accepted on 22 Sep 2014 for publication in Journal of Biomedical Optics.  The paper describes the remarkable ability of Laser Speckle Imaging, with temporal contrast analysis, to report measurements of flow that are largely independent of depth.  The work was in collaboration with MTI lab members Caitlin Regan and Dr. Choi.  Congratulations Julio and Caitlin!  [pdf]

3) Dr. Robert Wilson, a Hewitt Research Fellow working with Drs. Bruce Tromberg, Durkin, and Choi, is first author on “Quantitative short-wave infrared (SWIR) multispectral imaging of in-vivo tissue optical properties”, a paper that was accepted on 17 Jul 2014 for publication in Journal of Biomedical Optics.  The paper describes the combination of structured illumination with SWIR imaging, to achieve spatial frequency domain imaging at wavelengths longer than previously reported.  The work was in collaboration with MTI lab members Christian Crouzet (PhD student) and Dr. Choi; former Durkin lab member John Nguyen (now a PhD student at Vanderbilt University); NSF graduate research fellow Kyle Nadeau; current Durkin lab members Dr. Rolf Saager, Rebecca Rowland (undergraduate student researcher), and Dr. Durkin; Dr. Tromberg; and Dr. Frank Jaworski of Raytheon Vision Systems.  Congratulations all!  [pdf]

We bid a fond farewell to Chelsea Pittman, who most recently was the surgery specialist in our lab.  Chelsea joined the lab in 2012 as an undergraduate student researcher who worked closely with Sean White (then a graduate student, now a postdoctoral scholar in the lab) on in-vivo microscopy focused on study of the body’s reaction to engineered tissue implants.  Chelsea is a co-author on one paper (White et al., Tissue Engineering Part A, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24593148), and she provided critical to several ongoing projects currently funded by the National Institutes of Health and American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery.  We are sad to see her leave, but we are excited for her as she moves on to continued education in the Nursing Studies program at Drexel University.  Good luck Chelsea!

Caitlin Regan, a PhD student in the MTI lab, is first author on “Photothermal Laser Speckle Imaging”, a paper that was accepted on 7 Jul 2014 for publication in Optics Letters.  The work was in collaboration with Dr. Julio Ramirez-San-Juan, our outstanding colleague and former MTI lab member, who is at Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE) in Puebla, Mexico.  This is Caitlin’s first (of many) peer-reviewed publications as first author.  Congratulations Caitlin!