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MedTech Frontiers - August Seminar

Photoacoustic Imaging for Biomedical Applications

About the Seminar:

Photoacoustic imaging is a new medical imaging technology with tremendous clinical and commercial potential.  Recently it has received significant attention from the scientific and corporate press alike. 

This non-invasive imaging technique allows for high spatial resolution imaging of deep structures in the body.  The technique utilizes the 'photoacoustic effect' - the conversion of short light pulses into ultrasound waves and their detection outside the body with sensitive ultrasound microphones (transducers).

By measuring the ultrasound waves from multiple points outside the body, one can create a detailed 3D image of blood vessel structure, oxygen saturation levels, and even track various contrast agents as they target diseased tissues such as cancer. 

This talk will present an experimental photoacoustic imaging system and review its various aspects including: optics, electronics, ultrasound, image processing, nanoparticle chemistry, biology and medicine.  Finally, a number of medical needs that might be met using this technology will be introduced, including early cancer detection, sentinel lymph node mapping and others.

About the Speaker:

Adam de la Zerda Adam de la Zerda is a PhD candidate at the department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. His work in the Gambhir lab has pioneered the field of Photoacoustic Molecular Imaging and its applications on cancer imaging.  Adam has won numerous awards including the Best Photoacoustic Poster Presentation at SPIE Photonics West 2009, the Young Investigator Award at the Molecular Imaging Congress 2008, the DoD Breast Cancer Research Fellowship Award of 2008, the Bio-X Graduate Student Fellowship, and the Bay Area Entrepreneurship Contest.  He holds a number of patents and has published in various journals including Nature Nanotechnology, PNAS and Nano Letters.