Optical Cancer Imaging Lab

Screening, Diagnosis, and Therapy with Light

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Rising Stars in Integrative Oncology

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

The Rising Stars program was established to celebrate Dr. Connie Eaves’ Gairdner Wightman Award, her election to the Royal Society in the UK and her appointment to the Order of Canada. A pioneer in her field, Dr. Eaves has been a mentor to many young researchers at BC Cancer and a long-time advocate for equal opportunities in cancer research.

Dr. Tanskanen’s research focuses on developing angular diversity contrast mechanisms in novel optical endoscopes for lung cancer detection. This builds off of a recent publication and patent which demonstrated potential for using higher-order modes in optical fibers to collect multiple simultaneous images of a sample.

January 13, 2025
Congratulations Dr. Malone!
Congratulations to Dr. Jeanie Malone for successfully defending her PhD thesis!

Jeanie’s work ‘Towards endoscopic optical imaging of the fallopian tubes for tubo-ovarian cancer detection‘ explored the use of optical imaging catheters for cancer detection and management. Her work focused on detecting the earliest ovarian cancers where they form in the fallopian tubes. She demonstrated these devices can distinguish disease from normal tissue – the first step towards developing screening tools for ovarian cancer detection.

Select Publications:

Multipath artifacts enable angular contrast in multimodal Multimodal Optical Imaging of Ex Vivo Fallopian Tubes to Distinguish Early and Occult Tubo-Ovarian Cancers
Multipath artifacts enable angular contrast in multimodal endoscopic optical coherence tomography
Imaging Biomarkers of Oral Dysplasia and Carcinoma Measured with In Vivo Endoscopic Optical Coherence Tomography
December 9, 2024
Congratulations Dr. Tanskanen!
Congratulations to Dr. Adrian Tanskanen who successfully defended his PhD thesis!

Adrian’s work ‘Leveraging Multipath Effects in Multimodal Optical Coherence Tomography for Cancer Detection‘ described methods to characterize, mitigate and leverage multipath artifacts inherent to OCT systems using double-clad fiber.

Select Publications:
September 26, 2024
Congratulations Mehar & Allan!

Attenuation coefficient of normal (left) and pathologic (right) oral tissue.

A segmented airway and example cross-sections (segmentations in green).

Congratulations to Mehar and Allan who successfully defended their undergraduate honours theses this fall!

Mehar’s work ‘Methods for the Estimation of Depth-resolved Attenuation in OCT‘ compared different approaches for calculating the attenuation coefficient from OCT data. This allows us to characterize optical properties of tissue as they change with respect to depth.

Allan developed an automated tool to segment the tissue surface in OCT of the small airways of the lung. This tool allow us to quantify image features in the small airways without requiring manual segmentation. You can read his thesis, ‘Lumen Segmentation in Endobronchial Optical Coherence Tomography with Deep Learning‘ online.

December 18, 2023
Congratulations Chloe!

Chloe successfully defended her Master’s thesis ‘Segmentation of Oral Optical Coherence Tomography with Deep Learning‘ with no revisions, the highest level of pass at Simon Fraser University’s School of Engineering Science.

Chloe developed a four-part neural network pipeline to aid OCT interpretation by providing en face maps of epithelial depth. This allows for rapid identification of the most pathologic region in endoscopic OCT of the oral cavity, which may help identify the best site for biopsy. Chloe’s pipeline demonstrates as-good-as or better agreement than manual assessment between two raters, suggesting strong performance. Further work includes validating this tool on data acquired with a different OCT system to test generalizability.

August 17, 2023
Endocervical Cancer Screening Study

Screening is one of the most powerful tools we have to improve patient outcomes — earlier diagnoses allow for earlier interventions. Our group is conducting an imaging study examining the endocervical canal, which is hard to assess in traditional colposcopy.

In the most recent addition to the GCI Knowledge Translation Blog, OCIL PhD candidate Jeanie Malone discusses the imaging device used to look for early cancers, precancers, and other areas of concern.

You can read more about this study here.

June 26, 2023
Optica Biophotonics Optics Congress 2023
Dr. Lane & OCIL trainees presented work at the Optica Biophotonics Congress: Optics in the Life Sciences 2023 here in Vancouver! You can read more about their presentations here:
May 1, 2023
SPIE Photonics West 2023
OCIL trainees presented work at SPIE Photonics West 2023 in San Francisco, California. You can read more about their presentations here:
February 7, 2023
Blue Light Shines Brightly As A Highly Useful Oral Cancer Surgery Tool

Fluorescence visualization may drastically reduce local cancer recurrence by helping surgeons better visualize the diseased area around a cancerous lesion. New findings from a study nearly a decade in the making suggest fluorescence visualization during oral cancer surgery drastically improves the accuracy of the removal of cancerous tissue. This significantly reduces local recurrence rates of oral cancer. Learn more here.

January 3, 2017