Imaging of proteins, cells, and tissues is critical to understanding health and disease. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) announced nearly $32 million in funding to support biomedical imaging researchers, technology development, and the BioImaging North America international network of bioimaging facilities and communities.
CZI Deep Tissue Imaging Grantees were awarded $13 million across 13 projects.
Awardees of CZI’s Deep Tissue Imaging RFA work to advance the field of deep tissue imaging by developing technologies that will allow researchers to view information at cellular resolution, in complex tissue and through skin and bone, in living organisms. Initial 2 1/2-year pilot projects include technology applications in optical microscopy, photoacoustics, quantum imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, and X-ray.
One of this year's awardees was the project 'Quantum Multi-Photon Excitation Microscopy for Deep Tissue Imaging'. The Principle Investigator is Jung-Tsung “JT” Shen (Washington University in St. Louis). Lihong Wang (California Institute of Technology) is and Rice alum and was a Co-Principle Investigator alongside ECE Professor, Junichiro Kono. Wang served as an imaging expert and Kono was in charge of developing a quantum light source to be used for deep tissue imaging.
The team's award-winning project focused on creating transformative new enabling technology: a new class of quantum light sources outputting coherent states of photonic dimers. Their second goal was to test the proposed light source using both photoacoustic microscopy and compressed ultrafast photography—the world's fastest camera—to achieve super-resolution and deep-tissue imaging with high throughput and signal-to-noise ratio.
To learn more about their project visit https://bit.ly/2MpdKq6