UNC-CH Physics and Astronomy Colloquium

Jeremy Rogers, University of Wisconsin-Madison

“Measuring and modeling scattered light for quantitative contrast of nanoscale tissue structure”

Diffuse light scattering in tissue is often considered problematic for imaging because it limits depth and contrast in many imaging modalities. However, scattered light carries information that can be used to quantify tissue structure at the nanoscale and develop new sources of image contrast. Exploiting scattered light contrast requires development of instruments for detailed characterization of tissue scattering, computational modeling, and customized imaging instruments. The sensitivity of scattered light to subtle differences in cellular and extracellular structure provides advantages in applications ranging from low cost cancer screening to development of new sources of quantitative contrast in retinal imaging.

Jeremy D. Rogers, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Retina Research Foundation Edwin and Dorothy Gamewell Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned a BS in Physics from Michigan Technological University in 1999 and completed his PhD in Optical Sciences with Michael Descour at the University of Arizona in 2006 developing micro-optics technology and instrumentation for endomicroscopy. From 2007 to 2013, he worked with Vadim Backman at Northwestern University in developing light scattering methods to quantify nanoscale structure including fractal dimension for cancer screening.

He joined the BME faculty at UW-Madison in 2013, where his Biomedical Optics and Biophotonics research group develops optical methods, instrumentation, and computational models to enable quantification of nanoscale tissue structure, and scattering-based quantification and image contrast for retinal imaging and disease screening.