OSA awards prestigious biophotonics honor to photoacoustic imaging pioneer

March 6, 2018

OSA has named photoacoustic imaging trailblazer Lihong Wang as the 2018 Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award recipient.

The Optical Society (OSA; Washington, DC) has named photoacoustic imaging trailblazer Lihong Wang as the 2018 Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award recipient. Wang is recognized for inventing a two-dimensional (2D) receive-only camera and enabling real-time imaging of fast phenomena such as light propagation and fluorescence decay.

The Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award recognizes individuals for their innovative and influential contributions to the field of biophotonics, regardless of their career stage. The scope of the award encompasses all areas of biophotonics, ranging from fundamental optics discoveries in biology to development of new theoretical frameworks and novel instrumentation to clinical translational research for biomedicine.

Wang is Bren Professor of Medical and Electrical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech; Pasadena, CA). He has published 470 journal articles, delivered 460 keynote/plenary/invited talks, and published the first functional photoacoustic CT and 3D photoacoustic microscopy. In 2010 he, with co-author Hsin-i Wu, received the Joseph W. Goodman Book Writing Award for Biomedical Optics: Principles and Imaging and 2011 Wang was awarded OSA's C.E.K. Mees Medal for seminal contributions to photoacoustic tomography and Monte Carlo modeling of photon transport in biological tissues and for leadership in the international biophotonics community. Other recognitions include NIH Director's Pioneer Award, IEEE Technical Achievement and Biomedical Engineering Awards, SPIE Britton Chance Biomedical Optics Award, and an honorary doctorate from Lund University, Sweden and National Academy of Engineering member.

Wang's research includes development of deep photoacoustic imaging of biological tissues, breaking the long-standing optical diffusion limit, and providing a modality capable of multiscale high-resolution functional and molecular imaging of organelles, cells, tissues, and organs as well as small-animal organisms in vivo; development of time-reversed ultrasonically encoded optical focusing in scattering tissue; and development of compressed ultrafast photography, which is capable of imaging of light propagation in real time at a 10 THz frame rate.

For more information, please visit coilab.caltech.edu.