Nashua, NH--It's that time of year again when Laser Focus World (www.laserfocusworld.com) previews the top photonics conference in the United States: SPIE Photonics West 2013 (http://spie.org/photonics-west.xml). And again this year, as in the past few years, the BiOS or biomedical optics and biophotonics symposium, is leading the growth in conference papers and exhibit space.
For a full conference review of BiOS, OPTO, LASE, MOEMS-MEMS, and the GREEN PHOTONICS virtual symposium, please see our annual SPIE Photonics West preview at www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2012/12/laser-focus-world-photonics-west-preview-2013.html. But for BiOS specific details, an excerpt of the preview is provided below:
BiOS
It's looking as though once again, the Biomedical Optics Symposium (BiOS) will represent nearly half of SPIE Photonics West. As of mid-November 2012, “BiOS papers account for 44% of the total papers scheduled at SPIE Photonics West 2013,” according to Gorsuch.
BiOS, the world's largest biomedical optics and biophotonics symposium and exhibition, will launch SPIE Photonics West when it opens on February 2. The expo will be open both Saturday and Sunday, February 2-3, and the symposium--featuring nearly 2,000 presentations on clinical, translational, and fundamental research and development--will run through the entire week. Forty-three conferences are organized into five major tracks, including the Clinical Technologies and Systems track that will feature an array of work in cancer detection and treatment, with an invited talk on predicting breast cancer response to therapy by Quing Zhu of the University of Connecticut and Liqun Wang of the University of Manitoba (Canada).
Among the new conferences this year are Terahertz and Ultrashort Electromagnetic Pulses for Biomedical Applications, which includes numerous keynote and invited talks, and Optical Methods in Developmental Biology. The new Bioinspired, Biointegrated, Bioengineered Photonic Devices conference will begin with a keynote by John A. Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign talking about digital cameras in bio-inspired designs.
Another new conference, this one on optogenetics and hybrid-optical control of cells, will begin Saturday and Sunday with keynote addresses by Karl Deisseroth of Stanford University and Ernst Bamberg of Max-Planck-Institut für Biophysik (Germany), respectively. Deisseroth will review development and application of optogenetics, while Bamberg will discuss light-gated ion channels and pumps as optogenetic tools in neuro- and cell biology; both gentlemen have been recognized by numerous organizations for their contributions to the field. Bamberg will also present on this topic at the Saturday evening BiOS Hot Topics plenary event.
As in past years, the two BiOS symposium co-chairs--optical coherence tomography (OCT) pioneer James Fujimoto of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and R. Rox Anderson of the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard School of Medicine--will announce the winner of the second annual Britton Chance Award. Then, Sergio Fantini of Tufts University will cue Bamberg and the rest of the speakers: Ben Potsaid of MIT on technology to enable ultrahigh-speed OCT; Dan Oron of Israel’s Weizmann Institute on patterned multiphoton photoactivation in scattering tissue; and Jonathan Sorger of Intuitive Surgical, Inc. on clinical requirements for optical imaging in medical robotics. In addition, Bernard Choi of the Beckman Laser Institute will speak on camera-based functional imaging of tissue hemodynamics; and Mathias Fink of Institute ESPCI in France will discuss a multiwave approach to elasticity imaging for cancer detection. Joe Culver of Washington University in St. Louis is sure to fascinate the audience with his talk on functional optical imaging of the brain, while Vladimir Zharov of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences will update the audience on photoacoustic flow cytometry of circulating blood.
A special Sunday afternoon program for academics and entrepreneurs on FDA policies and procedures will feature Yun-Fu Hu of the FDA's Office of In Vitro Diagnostic Device Evaluation and Safety talking about regulation of in vitro diagnostics.
Finally, SPIE will present for the first time the Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award, which it plans to issue annually to recognize achievements showing strong promise for great impact.
SOURCE: Laser Focus World; www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2012/12/laser-focus-world-photonics-west-preview-2013.html