Lecture Title: Seeing the Unseen in Patients: Advancing Disease Prevention and Treatment through Microimaging

Guillermo Tearney M.D., Ph.D. is Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, Mike and Sue Hazard Family MGH Research Scholar, an Affiliated Faculty member of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), Fellow of the American College of Cardiologists (FACC), Fellow of the College of American Pathologists (FCAP) and heads his lab www.tearneylab.org at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Tearney received his MD magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School and received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Tearney’s research interests are focused on the development and clinical validation of noninvasive, high-resolution optical imaging methods for disease diagnosis. Dr. Tearney’s lab was the first to perform human imaging in the coronary arteries and gastrointestinal tract in vivo with Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), which provides cross-sectional images of tissue architectural microstructure at a resolution of 10 μm. He has also conducted many of the seminal studies validating OCT and is considered an expert on OCT image interpretation. Recently, Dr. Tearney’s lab has invented a next generation OCT technology, termed μOCT, which has a resolution of 1 μm and is capable of imaging cells and sub cellular structures in the coronary
wall. Dr. Tearney has also developed several other technologies, including a confocal endomicroscope capable of imaging the entire esophagus, an ultraminiature three-dimensional endoscope, a highly efficient form of near field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM), and novel fluorescence spectroscopy and multimodality imaging techniques. Dr. Tearney is co-editor of The Handbook of Optical Coherence Tomorgraphy and has written over 200 peer-reviewed publications, including papers that have been highlighted on the covers of Science, Nature Medicine, Circulation, Gastroenterology, and Journal of American College of Cardiology.

Dr. Tearney’s work extends beyond his laboratory at MGH, many of his technologies are being produced commercially and he has founded the International Working Group on Intracoronary OCT Standardization and Validation, a group that is dedicated to establishing standards to ensure
the widespread adoption of this imaging technology.