BME Virtual Weekly Seminar Series: Jesse B. Schallek

Description

Jesse B. Schallek, an assistant professor ophthalmology and neuroscience at the University of Rochester and associate director of computing at the Center for Visual Science, will give a talk titled "Imaging Single Blood Cells and their Behaviors in the Living Eye" for the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Mark Zarella will be the faculty host.

The neurons of the retina are essential for vision and are nourished by a fragile highway of vessels that supply nutrients to the cells that provide us sight. Unfortunately with age and disease, vessels often become compromised leading to blood leaks, stoppages and abnormal growth patterns that interrupt blood delivery to the retina. The goal of our research is to better visualize this vascular network and quantify kinetics of single blood cells to elucidate the earliest complications with a number of microvascular diseases. Toward this end, our laboratory is innovating an imaging technology called adaptive optics to measure and correct for the aberrations of the front of the eye, so that we may see with microscopic resolution, the single blood cells flowing within the back of the eye. In this presentation I will showcase a number of recent imaging innovations that enable us to better visualize all cells in the retina, including blood cells. By incorporating phase-contrast imaging, we are now able to render transparent cells visible by using infrared light, to which the eye is insensitive. Second, we combine adaptive optics technology with fast-camera capture that not only enables microscopic resolution, but also short exposure times that provide clear images of fast moving blood cells without motion-blur. This allows quantification of the exact number blood cells that pass within a capillary, a term called blood cell flux. Third, we devise imaging strategies that not only image very fast, but also allow us to visualize the glacial and purposeful movement of immune cells that have escaped the vessels as they respond to injury using time-lapse imaging. Linking all of this research, I will show computer strategies that count and measure the speed of these data-rich images to provide new information on the flow of >millions of blood cells. Together, these approaches provide new and exciting biomarkers that may address the most prevalent blinding diseases in the developed world that relate to changes in vascular perfusion and inflammation.