Professor Stephen A. Boppart Ph.D., M.D. | |
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Born | 1968 |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater |
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Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | Biophotonics |
Institutions | |
Thesis | Surgical diagnostics, guidance, and intervention using optical coherence tomography (1998) |
Doctoral advisor | James Fujimoto |
Other academic advisors | Bruce Wheeler |
Website | biophotonics |
Stephen A. Boppart is a principal investigator at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he holds an Abel Bliss Professorship in engineering. [1] He is a faculty member in the departments of electrical and computer engineering, bioengineering, and internal medicine. His research focus is biophotonics, where he has pioneered new optical imaging technologies in the fields of optical coherence tomography, multi-photon microscopy, and computational imaging. [2]
Boppart was born in the small farming community of Harvard, Illinois. [3] In 1990, he received his B.S. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in electrical engineering, with an option in bioengineering. [4] In 1991, he received his M.S. degree in electrical engineering from UIUC. His master's research involved the development of multielectrode arrays under Professor Bruce Wheeler. From 1991 to 1993, he developed national laser safety standards at the Air Force Research Laboratory in San Antonio, Texas. He then returned to graduate school to pursue both the Ph.D. and M.D. degrees under a joint program between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in medical and electrical engineering in 1998 under the direction of James Fujimoto, and completed his M.D. in 2000. While at MIT, he was involved in the invention and early development of optical coherence tomography (OCT). [5] [6]
Boppart started the Biophotonics Imaging Laboratory at UIUC in 2000, an interdisciplinary research group working at the intersection of engineering, medicine, and biology. The research focuses on the development of biophotonics for translational medicine in primary care and oncology. Building upon the development of OCT in his graduate studies, Boppart expanded OCT to new application areas. OCT was used to image the tympanic membrane (eardrum) to determine the presence of biofilm, a complicating factor in ear infections. [7] [8] He also developed OCT for intraoperative breast cancer imaging to determine the status of the resection margin. [9] [10]
At UIUC, his research interests expanded to include nonlinear optical microscopy. He developed nonlinear interferometric vibrational imaging, a variation of CARS microscopy, for imaging cancer resection margins. [11] He also pioneered multimodal-multiphoton microscopy, the combination of several nonlinear optical imaging modalities into a single imaging system. [12] [13] These nonlinear optical imaging technologies were enabled by the development of an optical fiber-based supercontinuum laser source. In 2017, Boppart demonstrated coherent control of neurons. [14] [15]
Boppart applied computational imaging to coherent optical microscopy by solving the inverse problem for OCT. [16] [17] [18] This allows for three-dimensional imaging with extended depth-of-field and digital correction of optical aberrations. [19] [20] [21]
From 2006 to 2008, Boppart was the founding director of the Mills Breast Cancer Institute at Carle Foundation Hospital. [22] In 2011, he headed the Strategic Initiative on Imaging at UIUC. [23] He was also heavily involved in the founding of the engineering-based Carle Illinois College of Medicine in 2015. [24] [25]
Multiple startup companies have been formed from Boppart's research. In 2011, Diagnostic Photonics, Inc. was launched which develops a handheld probe for imaging the breast cancer resection margin. [26] In 2013, PhotoniCare was formed to commercialize a handheld probe for imaging biofilms in the middle ear. [27]
SPIE, Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award, 2019 [28]
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technology Review Top 100 Young Innovators Award [29]
National Science Foundation Career Award [30]
Hans Sigrist Prize, 2012 [31]
Abel Bliss Professorship in Engineering, 2011 [3] [32]
Paul F. Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award, 2009 [33]
Fellow, Optical Society of America
Fellow, SPIE
Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
Fellow, Biomedical Engineering Society
The term biophotonics denotes a combination of biology and photonics, with photonics being the science and technology of generation, manipulation, and detection of photons, quantum units of light. Photonics is related to electronics and photons. Photons play a central role in information technologies, such as fiber optics, the way electrons do in electronics.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an imaging technique that uses interferometry with short-coherence-length light to obtain micrometer-level depth resolution and uses transverse scanning of the light beam to form two- and three-dimensional images from light reflected from within biological tissue or other scattering media. Short-coherence-length light can be obtained using a superluminescent diode (SLD) with a broad spectral bandwidth or a broadly tunable laser with narrow linewidth. The first demonstration of OCT imaging was published by a team from MIT and Harvard Medical School in a 1991 article in the journal Science. The article introduced the term "OCT" to credit its derivation from optical coherence-domain reflectometry, in which the axial resolution is based on temporal coherence. The first demonstrations of in vivo OCT imaging quickly followed.
Bruce J. Tromberg is an American photochemist and a leading researcher in the field of biophotonics. He is the director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Before joining NIH, he was Professor of Biomedical Engineering at The Henry Samueli School of Engineering and of Surgery at the School of Medicine, University of California, Irvine. He was the principal investigator of the Laser Microbeam and Medical Program (LAMMP), and the Director of the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic at Irvine. He was a co-leader of the Onco-imaging and Biotechnology Program of the NCI Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at Irvine.
An ultrashort pulse laser is a laser that emits ultrashort pulses of light, generally of the order of femtoseconds to one picosecond. They are also known as ultrafast lasers owing to the speed at which pulses "turn on" and "off"—not to be confused with the speed at which light propagates, which is determined by the properties of the medium, particularly its index of refraction, and can vary as a function of field intensity and wavelength.
Optofluidics is a research and technology area that combines the advantages of fluidics and optics. Applications of the technology include displays, biosensors, lab-on-chip devices, lenses, and molecular imaging tools and energy.
The Beckman Laser Institute is an interdisciplinary research center for the development of optical technologies and their use in biology and medicine. Located on the campus of the University of California, Irvine in Irvine, California, an independent nonprofit corporation was created in 1982, under the leadership of Michael W. Berns, and the actual facility opened on June 4, 1986. It is one of a number of institutions focused on translational research, connecting research and medical applications. Researchers at the institute have developed laser techniques for the manipulation of structures within a living cell, and applied them medically in treatment of skin conditions, stroke, and cancer, among others.
James G. Fujimoto is Elihu Thomson Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a visiting professor of ophthalmology at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts.
Lihong V. Wang is the Bren Professor of Medical Engineering and Electrical Engineering at the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Department of Medical Engineering at California Institute of Technology and was formerly the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professorship of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Wang is known for his contributions to the field of Photoacoustic imaging technologies. Wang was elected as the member of National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 2018.
Endoscopic optical coherence tomography, also intravascular optical coherence tomography is a catheter-based imaging application of optical coherence tomography (OCT). It is capable of acquiring high-resolution images from inside a blood vessel using optical fibers and laser technology.
Seok-Hyun "Andy" Yun is a scientist and technologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was born and raised in South Korea and received his B.S. (1991), M.S., and Ph.D. (1997) in Physics from KAIST in Korea. His dissertation research in fiber optics led to a venture-funded startup in San Jose, CA, where he was a founding member and manager. He joined the Wellman Center for Photomedicine (Dermatology) at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in 2003 and is as of January 2017 a Professor, MGH Research Scholar, and the Director of the Harvard-MIT Summer Institute for Biomedical Optics. He is a recipient of the 2016 NIH Director's Pioneer Award.
Elizabeth M. C. Hillman is a British-born academic who is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology at Columbia University. She was awarded the 2011 Adolph Lomb Medal from The Optical Society and the 2018 SPIE Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award.
Optical coherence elastography (OCE) is an emerging imaging technique used in biomedical imaging to form pictures of biological tissue in micron and submicron level and maps the biomechanical property of tissue.
Anita Mahadevan-Jansen is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and holds the Orrin H. Ingram Chair in Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. Her research considers the development of optical techniques for clinical diagnosis and surgical guidance, particularly using Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy. She serves on the Board of Directors of SPIE, and is a Fellow of SPIE, The Optical Society, Society for Applied Spectroscopy, and the American Society for Lasers in Medicine and Surgery. She was elected to serve as the 2020 Vice President of SPIE. With her election, Mahadevan-Jansen joined the SPIE presidential chain and served as President-Elect in 2021 and the Society's President in 2022.
Jannick Rolland is the Brian J. Thompson Professor of Optical Engineering at the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester. She is also the co-founder and CTO of LighTopTech, a women-owner business founded in 2013 to create medical imaging technologies with biomimetic noninvasive imaging technology. At the University of Rochester, she is the Director of the NSF I/UCRC Center for Freeform Optics (CeFO). She is also the Director of the R.E. Hopkins Center for Optical Design and Engineering that engages undergraduates in optical design, fabrication, and metrology.
Christine P. Hendon is an electrical engineer and computer scientist and an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University in New York City. Hendon is a pioneer in medical imaging. She develops biomedical optics technologies, using optical coherence tomography and near infrared spectroscopy systems, that enable physicians to perform guided interventional procedures and allow for structure-function dissection of human tissues and organs. Her advances in imaging technologies have led to improved diagnostic abilities and treatments for cardiac arrhythmias as well as breast cancer and preterm birth. She has been recognized for her development of optical imaging catheters for cardiac wall imaging by Forbes 30 under 30, the MIT Technology Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35, and by President Obama with the Presidential Early Career Awards in 2017.
Audrey K. Ellerbee Bowden is an American engineer and Dorothy J. Wingfield Phillips Chancellor's Faculty Fellow at Vanderbilt University, as well as an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. She is a Fellow of Optica, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE).
Melissa Caroline Skala is an American biomedical engineer who is a professor at the Morgridge Institute for Research. Her research considers photonics-based technologies for personalised medical therapies. She is a Fellow of The Optical Society, SPIE and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Jennifer Kehlet Barton is an American biomedical engineer who is Director of the BIO5 Institute at the University of Arizona. Barton develops optical techniques for the detection and treatment of cancer.
Igor Meglinski is a British, New Zealand and Finnish scientist serving as a principal investigator at the College of Engineering & Physical Sciences at Aston University, where he is a Professor in Quantum Biophotonics and Biomedical Engineering. He is a Faculty member in the School of Engineering and Technology at the Department of Mechanical, Biomedical & Design Engineering, and is also associated with the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies (AIPT) and Aston Research Centre for Health in Ageing (ARCHA).
Ji-Xin Cheng is an academic, inventor, and entrepreneur. He holds the Moustakas Chair Professorship in Optoelectronics and Photonics at Boston University. His inventions span optical imaging, cancer diagnosis, neuromodulation, and phototherapy of infectious diseases. He holds positions of co-founder of Vibronic and of Pulsethera. He is also the scientific advisor of Photothermal Spectroscopy and Axorus.