The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) on Dec. 2 announced two research groups led by Washington University in St. Louis faculty were named Frontiers of Imaging grantees.
Both groups will focus on the brain — where current imaging techniques can penetrate just about the depth of a couple of human hairs — with $1 million each to help fund the first stage of research.
“People recognized that this was a fundamental problem for classical optics,” said Jung-Tsung (JT) Shen, associate professor in the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering. He is principal investigator of one team, working with co-principal investigators Lihong Wang, of California Institute of Technology, and Junichiro Kono, of Rice University.
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Since classical optics has reached a barrier, Shen is using a different approach — exploiting the quantum entanglement between probing photons.
Another group will utilize photoacoustics. “If successfully realized, our technology will represent a quantum leap in molecular imaging, and we expect broad adoption across biomedical sciences and medicine,” said Song Hu, associate professor of biomedical engineering and principal investigator of the second group.
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Hu is working with co-principal investigators Lan Yang, the Edwin H. & Florence G. Skinner Professor of electrical and systems engineering, and Adam Kepecs, a BJC Investigator and professor of neuroscience and of psychiatry at the School of Medicine. They are developing a new photoacoustic technology that will enable cellular-resolution molecular imaging deep inside live tissue.
The two awards are part of nearly $13 million in funding from CZI to support biomedical imaging research projects.