The Fitzpatrick Institute for Photonics (FIP)

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 ~ FCIEMAS Schiciano Auditorium B~ 4:15 – 5:15pm

Andrew K. Dunn, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Biomedical Engineering University of Texas at Austin

High Resolution Optical Imaging of Brain Function

Quantitative imaging of brain function is crucial in developing a better understanding of how the brain works under both normal and pathophysiologic conditions such as migraine headache and stroke. During cerebral ischemia blood flow is reduced to an area of the brain, and the resulting cascade of hemodynamic and metabolic events ultimately leads to worsening of the brain injury. Similarly, in migraine headache, a complex pattern of hemodynamic alterations evolves in both space and time. Therefore, a crucial step in understanding the underlying mechanisms of the progression of these diseases is the development of imaging methods that can quantify the spatial and temporal alterations in brain function with high resolution. This talk will describe recent advances in the development of high resolution in vivo optical imaging techniques, such as laser speckle contrast imaging of cerebral blood flow and multiphoton phosphorescence lifetime mapping of oxygenation, and their applications to brain function with a particular emphasis on stroke.

Biography:  Andrew Dunn received his PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, where he investigated the origins of light scattering in biological tissues at the cellular and subcellular levels. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at the Beckman Laser Institute at the University of California at Irvine where he worked on multiphoton fluorescence microscopy in thick tissues. As an Instructor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, his worked focused on the development and application of novel optical imaging techniques for high resolution functional brain imaging. In 2005 he joined the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin.