Cell Bio 2012 event brims with biophotonics innovations

Seemingly well-timed in the midst of the 2012 holiday season, the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB)'s annual meeting, held December 15-19, 2012, in San Francisco, CA, this year, had a lot to give to its some-7,000 attendees through its exhibition, symposia, and poster presentations. While not solely a bio-optics and biophotonics event, the innovations for these markets present on the exhibit floor, etc., didn't disappoint.

A handful of companies had chosen ASCB as their venue to unveil some of their latest innovations in this space. Here are a couple of note:

At Bio-Rad Laboratories' (Hercules, CA) booth, the company showed its S3 Cell Sorter, "the first truly walk-up automated cell sorter available," they claim, as scientists need minimal training to operate it. Equipped with one or two lasers and up to four fluorescence detectors, the benchtop system has fully enclosed fluidics and temperature control in a 2.3 x 2.1 x 2.1 ft footprint. What's more, the system is ready to sort samples in less than 30 minutes for high-throughput applications such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and fluorescent cell imaging.

Scientific instrumentation maker FEI (Hillsboro, OR) launched a light/electron microscopy combo that enables scientists to see structural and functional relationships at various resolutions in their samples with unprecedented detail, says the company. The iCorr fluorescence microscope module, which is available either as an integrated component on the company's Tecnai transmission electron microscopes or as as a retrofitted module on already installed Tecnai platforms, delivers correlative results in minutes rather than hours or days, thanks to a white-light LED source and image acquisition at 10 fps.

For BioOptics World's full report on the event, please stay tuned for the January/February 2013 issue. Until then, have a wonderful New Year!

FiO poised for lots of bio

Next week's Frontiers in Optics 2012, the Optical Society's annual meeting held in Rochester, NY and known as FiO, has a schedule packed with biophotonics and bio-optics research to be presented.

On Monday morning, October 17, Plenary Session speaker David R. Williams of the University of Rochester will describe use of adaptive optics for imaging single cells in the living retina, enabling microscopic views with unprecedented detail. Other biomedical applications employing adaptive optics are on the schedule as well.

FiO will feature quite a bit on point-of-care applications, too: Stephen Boppart of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) will speak about optical coherence tomography (OCT) solutions for primary care physicians, and Holger Schmidt of the University of California-Santa Cruz will cover using optofluidics for molecular diagnostics.

Microscopy and OCT research will round out the bio offering. Elizabeth Hillman of Columbia University and Chris Xu of Cornell will each explore imaging of the living brain; Jeff Squier of the Colorado School of Mines will discuss multiphoton microscopy; and Gabriel Popescu of UIUC and Jerome Mertz of Boston University will talk about novel phase microscopy methods. In OCT, Zhongping Chen of the University of California-Irvine will cover intravascular applications, while David Huang of the Casey Eye Institute will discuss application to corneal imaging.

Please be sure to watch for tweets from the show floor while BioOptics World is there -- if you don't follow us already, just go to twitter.com/biooptics.

OCT system clearances galore

The first half of 2012 has seen a handful of optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging systems garner U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) clearance for clinical use, signaling what's sure to become the gold standard for imaging technology. In case you missed it, here's a short recap:

OptiMedica (Santa Clara, CA)'s Catalys Precision Laser System, one that couples OCT imaging technology with a femtosecond laser, earned its FDA clearance in January for use in capsulotomy and lens fragmentation--both ophthalmic procedures. What's more, it was CE-marked (Europe's FDA equivalent) for corneal incisions in April.

NinePoint Medical (Cambridge, MA)'s Nvision OCT system gained FDA clearance in January for endoscopic application; specifically, imaging Barrett's esophagus (which can precede esophageal cancer). The company plans to kick off clinical trials of the system this year and boost its manufacturing capabilities to support a commercial launch some time next year.

Bioptigen (Research Triangle Park, NC) has been having a busy year, too. Last week, the company received FDA clearance to begin commercializing its handheld Envisu spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) devices for diagnosis of physiological and pathological conditions of the eye in patients of all ages. The system has received regulatory approval from Canadian, European, and Australian authorities already, and has even been used to remove the cataract of a 38-year-old elephant.

CLEO:2012: Femto is fierce for cataract surgery

At CLEO:2012, happening this week in San Jose, CA, one of the show's Market Focus talks focused on the future of femtosecond lasers in cataract surgery, led by moderator Marcos Dantus (BioPhotonic Solutions; MI), whose company's femtoAdaptiv femtosecond laser won this year's CLEO/Laser Focus World Innovation Award; Arturo Chayet, MD, of the Codet Vision Institute (Mexico)--the first to ever perform all-laser LASIK surgery; Wayne Knox of the University of Rochester (NY); and Shareef Mahdavi of SM2 Strategic (CA).

Mahdavi stated in his portion of the talk that out of the 70% of procedures that use lasers, 30-40% use femtosecond lasers. As of 12/31/11, 46 of these lasers have been installed in the U.S., with more than 50% of them being used in the clinical space--a pretty powerful statistic to prove that this technology is becoming more and more accessible. What's more, 92% of those who use it recommend it, says Mahdavi.

Be sure to look for BioOptics World's upcoming May/June issue, in which Barbara Goode further delves into this utility for femtosecond lasers.

What's cutting-edge in optics?

In this year's issues of BioOptics World so far, we've looked at optics in the life sciences--in terms of their innovations and their business impact on those who produce them.

BOW contributor Mike May writes that in the biomedical arena, researchers always want new ways to see more--simply put, it's become increasingly important for them to be able to see more on the nanoscale. To accomplish this, a few innovations have emerged recently: A perovskite oxide-based superlens that cuts photon loss to boost resolution in microscopy; microscope optics that feature an embedded liquid lens, enabling capture of a crisp 2D image in depth in seconds (with option for 3D, which takes minutes); and an iPhone microscope (which I had touted as a "tricked-out iPhone" in my coverage) that uses a 1-3 mm microlens to work in tandem with the iPhone's detector pixels and, of course, be used pretty much anywhere.

Though the aforementioned innovations have yet to reach commercialization, with innovations come optics makers who want in on the biomedical action. I interviewed a handful of optics companies late last year who cite the life sciences market as being a fast-approaching--if not already major--driver of their business, with OEMs and researchers at the head of their pack of customers. Most of these companies can work with OEMs and researchers directly to develop tailor-made solutions at low cost, too.

Photonics West 2012: DLP technology finds more application in bio

At Photonics West 2012 (San Francisco, CA) I made sure to stop by Texas Instruments' (TI; Dallas, TX) booth, as the company is finding more ways to apply its proprietary Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology--which was originally used in some TVs and video projectors--in bioinstrumentation. The company used the show to launch its DLP LightCrafter module, which enables instrumentation developers to access spatial light modulation (the ability to form images from electronic signals) at up to 4,000 binary patterns per second. With the technology, developers can create, store, and display high-speed pattern sequences through the module's USB-based application programming interface (API) and graphical user interface (GUI).

DLP technology has already been applied to designs for contactless, 3-D fingerprint scanners, for example, according to Mike Troy, CEO at FlashScan3D (Richardson, TX), a 3-D biometric device maker. But packaged in the DLP LightCrafter module, the technology could yield faster fingerprint scans, internal data storage, and--because of its size--even a portable device, he says.


Bio applications enabled for the DLP LightCrafter include chemical analysis, spectroscopy, metrology, photostimulation, and even optical coherence tomography (OCT). For OCT, the module's spatial light modulation ability comes into play to bring higher speeds. And on demo at the booth was Christie Medical Holding's (Memphis, TN) VeinViewer Vision enhanced with the module, enabling a real-time digital projection of a patient's veins (see image)--a useful technology when veins are difficult to detect.

Future of Light Symposium tackles neurophotonics

Last month, I had the opportunity to head down to the 15^th Annual Future of Light Symposium held at Boston University’s Photonics Center. With a focus on neurophotonics, approximately 211 industry experts and novices alike came together to learn about the direction in which optogenetics and imaging are heading.

Optogenetics—which pairs genetic and optical methods to control specific events of interest in targeted cells of living tissue, even in freely moving animals—was the focus of the first half of the day, featuring renowned research from Ed S. Boyden of MIT; Adam Cohen of Harvard University; Alan Horsager of the University of Southern California and EoS Neuroscience, (which he co-founded); and John Spudich of the University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

Boyden discussed his team’s work in optogenetics, which aims to seek better drugs for treating brain disorders at less cost. Specifically, he described creating a fiber-optic implant by coupling optical fibers to LEDs, and shining its light on neurons linked with channelrhodopsin in mice, which can reveal 3-D neural activity patterns. The discovery could create targets for treating several brain disorders in humans. In mice the technique has cured them of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and certain forms of blindness.

And Cohen’s work certainly piqued my interest, as it had been published in Nature Methods just three days prior as well as covered briefly on BioOptics World (see Altered neurons fluoresce as they fire, with potential to speed drug development). He discussed using a gene from a Dead Sea microorganism to produce a voltage-indicating protein (VIP) that fluoresces at <500 µs when exposed to the electrical signal in a neuron. The approach allowed Cohen and his colleagues to trace the propagation of signals through the neuron. The work shows immediate promise for drug discovery, but holds future promise for genetic disorder diagnosis.

Lee Mather, Associate Editor