Elastic Light Scattering Spectroscopy For The Detection Of Pre-Cancer

Optical spectroscopy mediated by fiber-optic probes can be used to perform noninvasive, or minimally-invasive, real-time assessment of tissue pathology in-situ.  The method of elastic-scattering spectroscopy (ESS) is sensitive to the sub-cellular architectural changes, such as nuclear grade and nuclear to cytoplasm ratio, mitochondrial size and density, etc., which correlate with features used by pathologists when performing histological assessment.  The ESS method senses those morphology changes without actually imaging the microscopic structure.  Clinical demonstrations of ESS have been conducted in a variety of organ sites, with promising, and larger-scale clinical studies are now ongoing.  We have recently developed an analytical model that extracts, from the ESS spectra, the underlying physical correlates of the tissue relating to disease.

Irving J. Bigio

OSA Fellow

Irving J. Bigio received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Michigan in 1974.  From then until 2000 he was a scientific staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory (New Mexico), including service as Leader of the Laser Science and Applications Program (1988-1994). During various leaves of absence he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, a Visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and a Guest Fellow of Pembroke College at the University of Oxford, England.  Dr. Bigio is inventor on a number of patents for biomedical optics instrumentation, and has received three R&D-100 Awards for the development of biomedical optical devices.  Since February 2001 he has been at Boston University, where he is Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Physics, and Medicine.  He is also Honorary Guest Professor of the University College London, Department of Surgery.  Dr. Bigio serves on several government advisory panels and on external advisory boards for companies and academic institutions.  He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, and is a member of the American Physical Society and the SPIE.  In addition to other research projects in biomedical optics, Dr. Bigio recently led a multi-institutional program under the NIH/NCI Network for Translational Research in Optical Imaging, comprising several medical research centers in the US and Europe.

Reservations:

DINNER reservations are required by noon, November 16, 2009, the Monday of the meeting. MEETING ONLY reservations are required by noon, November 19, 2009, the day of the meeting.

Please make reservations online. Reservations may also be left on the answering machine at 617.584.0266. We no longer have an email address for reservations due to SPAM. When making reservation requests, please provide the following information:

Location:

Best Western TLC in Waltham (Map to TLC).

Networking—5:45 PM, Dinner—6:30, Meeting—7:30 PM.

Menu:

Dinner will include --- and coffee, tea, or milk.

Vegetarian option available on request

Dinner Prices:

General Information on NES/OSA Meetings

If the meeting must be canceled for any reason, we will try to call you at the phone number you leave with your reservation. Official notice of cancellation will be on our answering machine.

We have to pay for the dinners reserved as of the Tuesday before the meeting, so no-shows eat into our cash reserve. If you will not be able to attend, please let us know as early as possible. Otherwise, no-shows will be billed.

Membership Rates:

NOTE: The extra $5.00 of the non-member dinner fee can be used toward membership dues if the nonmember joins and pays dues for the current year at the meeting.