New Scialog Initiative Seeks to Catalyze Next Generation of Imaging Technologies
Optical physicists, chemists, engineers, and biologists will design cutting-edge research with the goal of developing the next generation of imaging technologies as Research Corporation for Science Advancement’s newest Scialog initiative, Advancing Bioimaging, begins in 2021.
Sponsored by RCSA and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, with additional support from the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation, the series of three yearly meetings will bring together approximately 50 early-career scientists with wide-ranging expertise to address the challenges involved in enhancing high-resolution imaging of tissues to support basic science and the treatment of disease.
“Advances in imaging technology — from hardware and biological probes to computational techniques and algorithms — could open up new avenues for developing treatments and curing diseases,” said CZI Imaging Program Officer Ed McCleskey. “Early-career researchers bring important insights to science, and we’re excited to hear their ideas for transformative projects in bioimaging.”
Scialog is short for “science + dialog.” Created in 2010 by RCSA, the Scialog format creates communities of early-career scholars across disparate fields to push the boundaries of knowledge aligned with each theme. Participating scientists discuss challenges and bottlenecks, build community around visionary goals for how these technologies can be developed and deployed, and seek collaborators for breakthrough pilot projects.
Participation in the series of three-day conferences in Tucson, Ariz., is by invitation. The first is scheduled for May 20-23, 2021.
A group of approximately 10 senior facilitators will guide discussions and review proposals. Representatives from other interested foundations and organizations will attend as well, adding their expertise to the conversation and building community around the topic.
Four landmark innovations in imaging have been recognized with recent Nobel Prizes — 3-D tomography/MRI, genetically encoded fluorescent proteins, super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, and atomic resolution electron microscopy. While they fail to deliver cellular resolution deep in tissue, they do provide models for how such technical advances occur.
“Those new technologies were each developed collaboratively through interactions among physicists, chemists, engineers, software developers, biologists, and clinicians,” said Program Director Andrew Feig. “Scialog’s multidisciplinary approach can give participants new ways of looking at things, which can be key in overcoming roadblocks.”
One challenge this Scialog will address is deep tissue imaging. MRI and ultrasound see through skin, but not at the resolution of single cells. Optical methods have high resolution but are impossibly distorted by a millimeter of soft tissue. Photoacoustic imaging can have cellular resolution and can reach deeper than optical methods, but different tissues distort it to varying extents. A new technology might see through human skin or skull at microscopic resolution, enabling the ability to detect and quantify cell division and vascularization of deep tumors, and to assess non-invasively how treatments modify this biology.
Other opportunities to be discussed could include the need for new modes of functional imaging to shed light on how cells communicate with one another in living organisms; the development of probes, contrast agents and biologically encoded systems that target specific loci or processes to expand the functionality to existing imaging modalities; and multimodal imaging that opens doors to new lines of research not accessible today.
