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Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) collaborated with the Department of Energy Nanoscale Science Research Centers and MIT to create some new hardware and software for imaging nanoscale structures smaller than the wavelength of light.

In parallel with Schuck’s experimental findings, Jeff Neaton, Director of the Molecular Foundry ’s Theory of Nanostructured Materials Facility and Alex McLeod, an undergraduate student working at the Foundry, developed a web-based toolkit, designed to calculate images of plasmonic devices with open-source software developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For this study, the researchers simulated adjusting the structure of a double bowtie antenna by a few nanometers to study how changing the size and symmetry of a plasmonic antenna affects its optical properties.

The article is a bit light on any more details, but they’ve created an interesting looking web-based visualization tool to see the results, combined with some interesting imaging hardware.  They have a paper publishing their results in Physical Review Letters called “Non-perturbative visualization of nanoscale plasmonic field distributions via photon localization microscopy” that you can get here (purchase required).

If you find the paper elsewhere, let me know!

via Berkeley Lab Team Uses New Imaging Concept to Visualize Plasmonic Fields at Nanoscale. and the LBL Website

Science doe, imaging, nanotechnology, research, whitepaper

In my previous life at a biomedical imaging company, I was amazed to discover how many surgeons are “OR Cowboys”, and simply start cutting without much preoperative visualization.  In a new study from doctors and researchers with the American College of Cardiology, they researched several biomedical imaging technologies (MRI, fluoroscopy, MDCT, echocardiography, etc) to determine which is the most accurate, and (most importantly) how the preoperative imaging altered the surgical course to improve outcomes and save time.

To date, there is no established consensus on how to measure the aortic valve annulus and which imaging technique to use as gold standard. In the majority of the centers, the aortic valve annulus is measured with transthoracic or transesophageal echocardiography at the parasternal long-axis view or at the 120� longitudinal view, respectively. However, 3-dimensional imaging techniques such as MDCT or magnetic resonance imaging demonstrate an elliptical shape of the aortic valve annulus with two principal diameters: the minimum and the maximum.5 This finding may have important implications on the selection of the prosthesis size.

via Multi-modality Imaging in Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation.

Science biomed, imaging, research

Researchers from Australia and New Zealand will be meeting at the Monash e-Research Center for OzVis 2009 where they’ll be discussing visualization research and outcomes.

This workshop will provide an occasion for participants to present research outcomes, share innovative ideas, publicize work and meet colleagues. It will be highly multidisciplinary, with participants from fields such as mathematics, geoscience, architecture, biology, medicine and astronomy presenting alongside computer graphics and visualization experts.

They keynote speaker will be Rob Lewis, foundation chair of X-Ray and Synchrotron Physics at Monash University.  The workshop will also be a joint session with the Live Cell Imaging Workshop.  Presentation abstracts are due by November 1st, 2009.

via Announcement – Abstracts due 1 November, Visualization Workshop, Melbourne, Australia.

Science imaging, workshop

I just found this gem of a conference announcement buried in the VizWorld.com Forums, accidentally marked as Spam.  I’ve resurrected it for you all to view, the announcement of the SPIE and IS&T’s International Conference on Human Vision and Electronic Imaging in San Jose this January.  Of interest:

This year, there will be a special session on Visualization and cognition in the interactive exploration of massive data sets. Papers will be welcome in these and related areas:

• Visual Data Mining
• Visual semantics
• Visual identification and encoding of features
• Perceptual comparisons of different visualization methods
• Finding patterns across different data types (e.g., image, video, text, GIS)
• Directing visual attention
• Perceptually-based visualization design patterns

Abstracts are due this Friday (July 24th), and the entire conference committee list can be seen in the forum post.

via Perception and Cognition in the Interactive Exploration of Large Data Sets « VizWorld.com Forums.

Science conference, human vision, imaging, is&t, spie