Rui Li receives research award at SPIE Photonics West

Rui Li, a graduate student at the Purdue Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, received a SPIE Translational Research Award for his paper, "Intraoperative assessment of breast tumor margins using a multimodal photoacoustic tomography system." Li, a member of Purdue's Label-free Spectroscopic Imaging Group, was presented the award at the SPIE Photonics West 2016 conference Sunday, February 14, for work demonstrating innovative optical techniques for real-world healthcare challenges.

The SPIE Translational Research virtual symposium, designed to facilitate the translation of biophotonics research into clinical practice, highlighted 229 papers from this year's BiOS that feature light-based technologies that can change patient outcomes. Li’s paper was one of the top three award-winning papers that featured health-care solutions using optical coherence tomography (OCT) and photoacoustic tomography.

More than half of the papers involve new techniques to guide surgeons during operations, said symposium chairs Bruce Tromberg, Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Ctr., Univ. of California, Irvine and Gabriela Apiou, Harvard Medical School, Wellman Ctr. for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital.

All three award-winning presentations are "poised to move from bench to bedside," Tromberg said. "Hopefully they will take off and improve the standard of care for patients."

Photo: Rui Li, far right, receives a SPIE Translational Research Award