Optical Cancer Imaging Lab

Screening, Diagnosis, and Therapy with Light

  • New publication on optimization of autofluorescence collection in rotary pullback catheters

    Eric Brace, a PhD student in our group has a new publication in Optica’s Biomedical Optics Express.

    Blue-light autofluorescence imaging captures a snapshot of tissue biochemistry without using dyes or contrast agents. Because healthy and abnormal tissues produce different fluorescence patterns, this approach can be used to distinguish cancerous or precancerous lesions.

    However, the amount of natural fluorescence from tissue is very faint. Additionally, parts of the imaging system (like plastics) can fluoresce, introducing unwanted background light that makes the fluorescence from tissue harder to detect. 

    This work characterized the fluorescence of each component in a rotary pullback catheter OCT-AFI system to identify sources of unwanted background fluorescence. From this analysis, modifications were made to the imaging system including a new filtering approach.  The result was a nearly eightfold improvement in the system’s signal-to-background ratio.

    This improvement makes it possible to identify subtler features in autofluorescence imaging, which we hope will support detecting earlier or smaller lesions.

  • 2024 Outstanding Trainee Publication Awards

    Congratulations to PhD candidate Ian Janzen for his work being selected as one of the winners of the BC Cancer 2024 Outstanding Trainee Publication competition, which recognizes excellent research published by students, medical residents, and post-doctoral fellows conducted at BC Cancer.

    Most lung cancers are diagnosed at advanced stages, where treatment pathways are determined by target mutations. Patients with lung cancers with a high PD-L1 score currently receive an immunotherapy regimen – however, nearly half of patients do not respond to this approach. Ian’s recent publication develops a predictive risk model using a combination of imaging features (‘radiomics’) from CT scans and clinical descriptors to determine which patients would not benefit from standard immunotherapy treatments.

    You can read more here: Machine Learning and Computed Tomography Radiomics to Predict Disease Progression to Upfront Pembrolizumab Monotherapy in Advanced Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer: A Pilot Study

  • Nancy McKinstry Trainee Excellence Awards

    Congratulations to Jeanie Malone for recently being awarded one of the three Nancy McKinstry Trainee Excellence Awards for 2025.

    The Nancy McKinstry Endowment Fund for Ovarian Cancer Research, held at BC Cancer Foundation, is cultivating the next generation of ovarian cancer experts. Celebrating cutting-edge research, this award recognizes rising scholars at the Masters, Doctoral, and Postdoctoral level who are poised to accelerate new treatments and improve care for British Columbians facing ovarian cancer.

    Dr. Jeanie Malone is redefining what’s possible in early cancer detection by developing state-of-the-art optical imaging devices. In a first-of-its-kind study, Dr. Malone is pioneering a minimally invasive method to visualise the inside of fallopian tubes and identify Serous Tubal Intraepithelial Carcinoma lesions – the earliest signs of the most common and aggressive form of ovarian cancer. Her research could pave the way for screening method for this type of cancer.

    You can read the full funding announcement here.

  • SPIE Medical Imaging 2026

    OCIL trainees shared their work at SPIE Medical Imaging here in Vancouver.

    Fumiya Inaba is developing deep learning tools to aid pathologists in determining the future prognosis of prostate cancer patients from biopsies.

    You can read more here: Instance scoring via distillation of multiple instance classifiers for interpretable digital pathology.

    Ian Janzen is developing machine learning tools tailored to a Canadian population to assist radiologists in identifying which of the smallest lung nodules require further intervention.

    You can read more here: Applying deep learning and radiomics to diagnostically challenging nodules in LDCT screening programs

    Fumi was awarded the Robert F. Wagner all-conference best student paper award for his work! Congratulations Fumi!

  • Rising Stars in Integrative Oncology

    Dr. Jeanie Malone in the MacAulay lab has been selected as a BC Cancer Rising Star (post-doctoral award).

    The Rising Stars awards are a tribute to Dr. Connie Eaves, whose remarkable career and contributions to science continue to inspire our community. Dr. Eaves was the recipient of the Gairdner Wrightman Award, elected into the Royal Society in the UK, and appointed the Order of Canada. Her legacy of excellence and dedication to advancing cancer research lives on
    through these awards. The Rising Stars awards recognize the next generation of promising researchers within our trainee community who are dedicated to shaping the future of cancer research.

    The most common ovarian cancer subtype first forms in the fallopian tubes. Dr. Malone is studying whether a catheter that collects both imaging and a fluid sample from the fallopian tubes can detect early-stage ovarian cancers. She previously showed that imaging can detect early cancers in surgically resected fallopian tubes; now she is testing feasibility and safety of this device in advanced-stage cancer patients immediately before their surgery. There are no effective screening tools for ovarian cancers: if successful, this approach may enable earlier diagnosis and more care pathways for patients.

  • SPIE Photonics West 2026

    OCIL researchers shared their work at SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco, California.

    Shahed Ejadi presented two projects aimed at improving treatment monitoring for oral cancer (Towards multimodal imaging for real-time monitoring of oral photodynamic therapy; Design and characterization of led-based illuminators for oral cancer photodynamic therapy )

    Dr. Jeanie Malone shared her work on translating OCT to the operating room (Towards in vivo optical coherence tomography of the fallopian tubes for tubo-ovarian cancer detection)

    Kimiya Mousavi shared her research on non‑invasive imaging techniques to understand how placental organoids respond to changing environments (Label-free imaging of trophoblast organoids under different oxygen concentrations using dynamic optical coherence tomography)

    Dr. Adrian Tanskanen showcased advances in collecting optical coherence tomography with higher-order modes (Rotary catheter endoscopic few-mode fiber optical coherence tomography; Angular diverse imaging with endoscopic few-mode fiber optical coherence tomography)

  • OCIL trainees present at CCRA 2025

    OCIL trainees presented posters and lightning talks at the 2025 Canadian Cancer Research Conference in Calgary, Alberta. 

    • Kimiya Mousavi: Non-invasive, label-free imaging of 3D cell culture with dynamic optical coherence microscopy
    • Adrian Tanskanen: Endoscopic angular-diverse optical coherence tomography for early cancer detection
    • Jeanie Malone: Towards in vivo optical fallopian imaging for tubo-ovarian cancer detection
    • Ian Janzen: Enhancing early lung cancer diagnosis via deep learning and radiomics for sub-centimeter nodule
      classification in LDCT screening programs
    • Fumiya Inaba: Towards a quantitative phenotypic progression model of prostate cancer
    • Puneet Arora: Spatially resolved proteomics to investigate immune cell-tumor cell interactions in breast ductal carcinoma in-situ upgrade
    • Yu Xuan (Rita) Jin: Radiomic signatures of microcalcifications predict upgrade risk in ADH and low-grade DCIS

  • New publication on near-infrared OCT phantoms of the small airways

    Eric Brace, a PhD student in our group has a new publication in SPIE’s Journal of Biomedical Optics.

    Developing new imaging devices is challenging – you might not always be able to get sample tissue to test their performance. Optical tissue ‘phantoms’ are artificial duplicates which mimic the way light interacts with tissue, acting as a test-bench for early device prototyping. 

    Eric developed methods to produce easy to fabricate, repeatable, 3D phantoms which mimic the small airways of the lung and surrounding parenchyma. He tailored the optical properties of these phantoms to work at the near-infrared wavelengths  of our OCT systems (1310 ± 50nm). This is an important consideration as many phantoms in literature are produced for applications using visible light. 

    The phantoms are produced filling a 3D printed mold with an agar-intralipid solution which solidifies into a gel upon cooling. Malignancies can be simulated by attaching different concentrations of the agar-intralipid solution onto the 3D printed lumen to appear as embedded lesions. As some intralipid comes out of suspension, this produces textures similar to the alveoli visualized in the small airways of the lungs. 

  • European Conferences on Biomedical Optics 2025

    Kimiya Mousavi, a master’s student in our group presented her work at the European Conferences on Biomedical Optics this July in Munich, Germany.

    Kimiya has been developing image processing methods for dynamic OCM to provide researchers new tools with which to study trophoblast organoids, a type of 3D cell culture which models placental development. While traditional methods of studying these models requires sectioning and staining the organoids, dynamic OCM allows for non-invasive, label-free imaging by using metabolic activity to distinguish cells and sub-cellular structures.

    You can read Kimiya’s abstract here:

  • Academic Excellence at OCIL

    Recent OCIL graduate Dr. Jeanie Malone was awarded the UBC Applied Science Dean’s Academic Excellent award, an honour given to the top graduate student across all fields in Applied Science who demonstrates strong academic and research track record, and has made significant contributions to their chosen field of study.

    Dr. Malone holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and a BASc in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia. During her doctoral studies, she investigated the application of these technologies in tubo-ovarian, cervical, oral, and lung cancers, as well as lung transplantation.

    Congratulations Dr. Malone!