Download Additional Information about Biomedical Imaging

BME
CornellEngineering
Nancy E. and Peter C. Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering
Biomedical Imaging
The pioneering work of determining the biological mechanisms of disease and the lifesaving
work of diagnosing and treating medical problems rely on sophisticated imaging techniques
developed by engineers. At Cornell, collaborations among engineers, physical scientists, life
scientists, and clinicians provide superb opportunities to create and improve these tools.
BME faculty members focus on time-resolved and spectrally-resolved measurement
and visualization of biological structures across scales, with spatial scales ranging from
macromolecular complexes to cells to whole organisms, temporal scales ranging from
milliseconds to years, and spectral scales ranging from megahertz radiofrequency waves to
exahertz x-rays. A wide range of imaging modalities and methods for achieving contrast are
developed and used, including optical imaging, MRI, and CT. Cornell is known for pioneering
development and application of nonlinear optical imaging techniques for in vivo imaging.
Cornell researchers are also inventing new image analysis methods and novel contrast agents
for clinical and research use. BME faculty apply these imaging tools to a diverse set of human
health problems including neurodegenerative disease, cancer, and congenital heart disease.
Biomedical imaging is also tightly interconnected with other areas of BME, providing in vitro
and in vivo tools to evaluate biomaterials, validate systems biology models, monitor drug
delivery, and map biomechanical properties.
Research Interests of the Biomedical Imaging Faculty
Left: Volumetric OCT reconstruction of an NIH-3T3
fibroblast cluster in Matrigel, showing computed
cellular resolution over a 400 um depth range.
False color encodes depth. (Adie)
Prof. Steven Adie’s lab develops optical coherence tomography (OCT)-based methods for the
study of cellular and tissue-scale collective cell behavior in diseases such as cancer. His group
leverages physics-based computed imaging techniques to enable high-throughput volumetric
OCT with cellular resolution. The group also develops methods for high-resolution imaging
of soft tissue biomechanics. These techniques are utilized to study the important role of
biophysical (e.g. mechanical) factors in normal biological processes and disease, both in vitro
and in vivo.
In Prof. Jonathan Butcher’s lab, multiple different imaging modalities are applied to the
study of embryonic morphogenesis, the dynamics of cardiac function, as well as small animal
models of congenital and acquired cardiac disease. His lab uses multiphoton microscopy, high
frequency ultrasound and micro-CT to investigate cardiac structure-function dynamics in
living embryonic and adult model animals.
µCT reconstruction of a Nano-CT image of the
day 10 embryonic chick vasculature of a mouse
heart. (Butcher)
liver taken at 700 nm
resolution.
(Cornell Imaging Facility)
(Over)
Prof. Peter Doerschuk’s group develops quantitative image analysis algorithms that are used for a diverse set of imaging problems, including
determining virus structure from electron microscopy and inferring the state of the brain’s neurovascular system from optical images.
Prof. Nozomi Nishimura’s lab is interested in understanding how inflammation, blood
flow and cell death are linked in several different diseases. The strategy is to develop novel
tools such as multiphoton microscopy to image the contribution of multiple physiological
systems to diseases with in vivo animal models. The lab uses these new vivo optical imaging
developments in mouse models to study the diversity of cellular phenotypes and structures in
a whole, living organism. Targeted applications include heart disease, neurodegeneration and
stem cells in the intestine.
In Prof. Chris Schaffer’s lab, light is used not only to visualize biological systems, but also for
targeted ablation and manipulation. For example, using extremely short laser pulses, Schaffer’s
lab causes localized injuries to individual blood vessels in the brains of rodents, triggering
a small stroke. These targeted microstrokes allow the lab to study the role of microvascular
lesions in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer ’s disease.
In vivo multiphoton microscopy images of blood
vessels (green) and cardiac cells (red) in the
beating mouse heart at various times in the
cardiac cycle. (Nishimura)
Prof. Yi Wang holds a joint appointment with Radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College and is the co-director of the Cornell MRI facility
in Ithaca, which is equipped with a state-of-the-art GE 3 Tesla imager. His research interest is to develop and improve MRI methods using
mathematics, physics, electronic engineering, biological, and computer science tools to help physicians better diagnose and treat patients. His
laboratory is known for pioneering MRI techniques, including navigator method for compensating motion in cardiac MRI, time resolving
imaging to study organ function, and lately quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) that is very useful for brain iron mapping. His group
is closely working with clinicians on various diseases including heart diseases, Parkinson’s diseases, multiple sclerosis, and liver and prostate
cancer.
Prof. Warren Zipfel’s lab focuses on the development and application of novel methods of fluorescence microscopy and bioanalytical
techniques. He was involved in the early development and commercialization of multiphoton microcopy at Cornell and continues to apply
multiphoton, as well as confocal and super-resolution microscopies in a variety of research areas ranging from transcriptional regulation and
3D nuclear structure to cancer biology. Prof. Zipfel serves as the Faculty Advisor to Cornell’s BRC Imaging Facility and is the Director of the
Cornell Stem Cell Optical Imaging Core.
BME department faculty
Steven Adie, [email protected]
Jonathan Butcher, [email protected]
Iwijn De Vlamink, [email protected]
Peter Doerschuk, [email protected]
Nozomi Nishimura, [email protected]
Graduate field faculty
Daniel Aneshansley, [email protected]
Adele Boskey, [email protected]
Harold Craighead, [email protected]
Susan Daniel, [email protected]
David Erickson, [email protected]
Lara Estroff, [email protected]
Jack Freed, [email protected]
Jesse Goldberg, [email protected]
Brian Kirby, [email protected]
Amit Lal, [email protected]
Manfred Lindau, [email protected]
Christiane Linster, [email protected]
John Lis, [email protected]
Chris Schaffer, [email protected]
Yi Wang, [email protected]
Rebecca Williams, [email protected]
Warren Zipfel, [email protected]
Frederick Maxfield, [email protected]
Alyosha Molnar, [email protected]
Susan Pannullo, [email protected]
Matthew Paszek, [email protected]
Lois Pollack, [email protected]
Anthony Reeves, [email protected]
Alexander Travis, [email protected]
Melissa Warden, [email protected]
Alan Weinstein, [email protected]
Ulrich Wiesner, [email protected]
Mingming Wu, [email protected]
Chris Xu, [email protected]
Ramin Zabih, [email protected]
Representative publications
Adie, S., Graf, B., Ahmad, A., Carney, P., and Boppart, S. “Computational adaptive optics for
broad- band optical interferometric tomography of biological tissue,” 2012, Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, USA. 109(19):7175–7180.
Gregg CL, Recknagel AK, Butcher JT., “Micro/nano-computed tomography technology
for quantitative dynamic, multi-scale imaging of morphogenesis,” Methods Mol Biol.
2015;1189:47-61. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-1164-6_4. PMID: 25245686.
Imaging Alzheimer’s disease: Blood vessels
(yellow) and amyloid plaques (green), the hallmark
of Alzheimer’s disease, imaged in the brain of a
mouse. (Schaffer)
Super-resolution microscopy image of the
activated Heat Shock gene on a Drosophila
polytene chromosome. Blue: DAPI stain of
chromatin; Red: Rhodamine labeled antibodies to
Poll II; Green: Cy2 labeled antibodies against Heat
Shock Factor. (Zipfel)
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