Center for Clinical and Translational Science

Dr. Daniel Gareau, Clinical Scholars in Dr. James Krueger’s Laboratory gave a seminar on “Novel Confocal Microscopes Fuel Digital Pathology” at the City College of New York for the Department of Physics on March 8, 2012.  The audience consisted of college students majoring in physics and biology, and faculty from each discipline.

Quantitative endpoint metrics for cancer diagnosis make biomedical optoeletronic imaging technology with automated image processing/analysis an attractive diagnostic asset for clinicians, pathologists, and surgeons.  Confocal microscopy is a rapid, inexpensive, and non-invasive procedure to image skin cells as compared to histology.  Unique engineering adjustments are made to achieve the sensitivity and specificity needed for clinical translation.  Rapid polygon LASER beam scanning to eliminate motion artifact during in vivo imaging and multimodal imaging for contrast and counter-contrast are used in this procedure, as well as software solutions utilizing automated pathological pattern recognition in 3D images and pseudo-coloring to present the multimodal images in a way that the medical community can use to diagnose a disease and develop a treatment plan.

Dr. Gareau’s stated, “I love talking to college students because they have enough background to begin to understand the science and complexity of the biology involved but they have the novice wonderment that is just perfect for infection by a well packaged story.  The story I tell is one of engineering tools to help fight cancer.  Audiences generally understand the concept of surveillance so it’s easy to explain the fancy LASER scanner that detects the cancer cell through the “where’s Waldo” analogy.  Our adventures in biophotonics for dermatology have yielded some successful projects that span from the very basic science (where we are considering the light/tissue interaction) through engineering (where we are designing the scanning LASER microscopes) to clinical translation where we are addressing a health care need (rapidly guide surgery for skin cancer removal).  When you put the whole story together, highlighting the translational research, the activation energy can be achieved when people are really excited about science.  I love it when I see a student leave one of my talks saying: “he did it, now it’s my turn.”