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About the biophotonics & bioengineering laboratory (BBL)

The biophotonics and bioengineering laboratory, under the direction of Dr. Victor Yang, a senior scientist in Physical Sciences and the Hurvitz Brain Sciences Research Program, and a staff neurosurgeon at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, aims to develop new diagnostic imaging and therapeutic monitoring tools for minimally invasive procedures.

Past research achievements include the following:

  • Improving catheter designs and developing new methods for Doppler optical coherence tomography (OCT) in interstitial, intravascular and endoscopic studies
  • Developing speckle variance as a tool for microvasculature detection using swept source OCT
  • Developing high-power, polygon filter-based frequency domain mode lock tunable laser sources for OCT
  • Developing Yb (Ytterbium)-doped fibre gain element for high-power multichannel OCT
  • Demonstrating multichannel OCT for in vivo imaging
  • Using ultra-short pulsed laser ablation in hard tissues for inline coherent imaging
  • Developing tools to detect cell death with spectroscopic OCT
  • Using artificial muscle actuation for catheter-based OCT imaging 
  • Conducting an in vivo preclinical trial of endovascular OCT imaging of the carotid artery.

Research foci:

  • OCT
  • Intraoperative fluorescence imaging
  • Micromachined electromechanical probes and catheters
  • Medical imaging
  • Surgical guidance

The following scientists are close collaborators on projects related to optical imaging and surgical guidance: Dr. Greg Czarnota, Dr. Brian Courtney, Dr. Leo da Costa, Dr. Todd Mainprize, Dr. Peter Howard, Dr. Sandra Black, Dr. Colin McCartney, Dr. Hall Chew, Dr. Joseph Chen, Dr. Benjamin Goldstein and Dr. Albert Yee.