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!
Showing posts with label biomedical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biomedical. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Thursday, October 11, 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)