SP 6: Computational Photo-Scatterography: Unraveling Scattered Photons for Bio-Imaging

Imaging of human body at cellular-level at various depths below the skin can fundamentally impact healthcare by providing live views of cross sections of anatomy. However, current methods to achieve cellular resolution are invasive (e.g. tissue biopsy). SP6 is developing computational imaging sensors for non-invasive, deep below the skin, and at cellular-level resolutions. These sensors will enable bio-imaging deep below the skin simply by pointing a camera at any part of the body. This would put individual users at the center of their healthcare experience and make them true partners in their healthcare delivery. The health imaging devices that result from this project will act as an important pillar in the personalized medicine revolution. This research expedition also holds the potential to launch new healthcare paradigms for chronic disease management, pediatrics, low-resource healthcare, and disaster medical care.

The development of new high rate sensors, able to capture the data necessary to reconstruct the structure of the tissue deep below the skin, constitutes the most important contribution of the project. These systems and algorithms will have the potential to break the current resolution limits of noninvasive bio-imaging by nearly two orders of magnitude, enabling cellular-level imaging at depths far beyond currently possible.

SP6 is developing next generation high rate sensors that needs to be integrated into mobile health infrastructure for the users to participate in their healthcare delivery effectively. TR&D3 Aim 2 will share hardware/software co-designs for high rate sensing and embedded biomarker computations with SP6 to serve as digital backends to integrate novel sensing systems developed by SP6 into mobile health workflow. In addition, machine learning algorithms developed by TR&D3 under Aim 1 for automated discovery of micromarker will be disseminated to SP6 for developing computationally-efficient version of the new biomarkers enabled by the new imaging modalities pioneered by SP6.