Photonics West opens with strong first day in San Francisco

24 January 2010
BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA — Photonics West opening-day attendance was up over last year for both technical registrations and exhibit visitors, with 25% more registrants altogether than in 2009. Conference chairs for the strong Biomedical Optics (BiOS) technical program that opened the week reported seeing high-energy sessions including several overflowing rooms and high-quality talks. The weekend’s BiOS exhibition is seeing strong traffic and has a record number of booths.

Photonics West runs through Thursday in the Moscone Center inBiOS exhibition floor at Photonics West 2010 San Francisco, with the 1,140-company exhibition opening on Tuesday. Laser and optoelectronics conferences began Sunday, and MOEMS-MEMS conferences start tomorrow with an opening plenary session.

The celebration of the golden anniversary of the laser begins literally at the front door of Photonics West with a laser-light display in the entrance to the Moscone North Hall. SPIE is marking this year’s anniversary of the invention of the laser with activities at Photonics West and other events and through laser technical articles and features, as part of the Society’s Advancing the Laser tribute. SPIE is also a Founding Partner and Sponsor of LaserFest, a collaborative celebration of the science community providing funding for outreach and educational activities.

More than 850 people attending the Saturday evening BiOS Hot Topics session heard about advances toward improving medical treatment and diagnostics in several areas:

* More sensitive and specific capability of monitoring the progress of therapy in breast cancer through diffuse scattering imaging, OCT, and Raman (Nirmala Ramanujam, Duke Univ.)

* OCT high-speed imaging to provide new information on stent placement and plaque build-up more safely and comfortably for the patient (Joseph Schmitt, LightLabs Imaging)

* Stroboscopic and spectroscopic imaging tools for improved retinal functional imaging (Amiram Grinvald, Optical Imaging)

* Molecular optical imaging techniques to fill the gap between highly sensitive PET imaging and lower-resolution, multi-agent MRI (Brian Pogue, Dartmouth Univ.) * Elastic scattering microscopy to study returned signal correlations from tissues that lie beyond the boundary of the sampled area (Irving Bigio, Boston Univ.)

* Speckle imaging and tissue spectroscopy for improved graphics processing and software to better identify changes in an image in nearly real time (Steven Jacques, Oregon Health and Science Univ.)

* Femtosecond lasers and systems enabling simultaneous multi-foci imaging systems (Jeff Squier, Colorado School of Mines)

* New microscopy techniques and adaptive optics to improve contrast in aberration-free images to provides the added capability of guiding the imaging process along any arbitrary path through the imaging volume (Tony Wilson, Univ. of Oxford).

Read more in the daily report from on-site.

See a brief video clip from the BIOS exhibiton and Hot Topics session.

Find event details in the conference program online.

SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, was founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. Serving more than 188,000 constituents from 138 countries, the Society advances emerging technologies through interdisciplinary information exchange, continuing education, publications, patent precedent, and career and professional growth. SPIE annually organizes and sponsors approximately 25 major technical forums, exhibitions, and education programs in North America, Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific, and supports scholarships, grants, and other education programs around the world.