Imaging - The overall mission of the Imaging Core is to provide the resources, personnel, and training needed to develop, modify, repair, and implement the multi-modality imaging platform for data collection, processing, and evaluation at the clinical sites of the proposed NTR Research Center. The Core Director is Katsuo Kurabayashi, PhD at the University of Michigan who will oversee the operation of this resource, and will address the needs of each clinical site for proper function, calibration, and standardization of the wide area endoscope and confocal microscope imaging systems used for clinical data collection. In addition, he will direct the development of new endoscope compatible instruments that provide improved imaging performance, such as the dual axes confocal microscope that can image in vertical cross-sections with over 500 (am tissue penetration to assess for neoplastic invasion and micro-metastases. Sakae Takehana is the Core Co-Director and will be responsible for providing the wide area endoscopy systems for imaging the fluorescent-labeled peptides from Olympus Medical Systems Corp in Tokyo, Japan. In addition, he will lead the effort to tune the fluorescence filter specifications on the Lucera videoendoscope to optimize signal collection from the dye and to develop near-infrared fluorescence imaging techniques in the future. Rolf Wolters, PhD is also a Core Co-Director and is from STI Medical Systems Inc in Honolulu, HI. He will be responsible for providing image processing software to perform registration of the multi-modal images, including the white light and fluorescence data from the videoendoscope. Dr Wolters will work closely with the Site Directors and CRAs from each clinical center to analyze the video data, provide imagie registration and correlation to pathology, and develop diagnostic maps to help the clinician identify dysplastic regions for guiding tissue biopsy. Because of the large geographical distance between the home facilities of the Core Directors, they will discuss the NTR Core imaging instrumentation needs via teleconference on a bi-weekly basis. Implementation and follow up of action items will be performed in the appropriate optical engineering lab, including 1) Olympus Medical Systems Corp for modification, tuning, and repair of the Lucera videoendoscopes, 2) STI Medical Systems Inc for modification, trouble-shooting, and debugging of image processing and feature extraction software, and 3) University of Michigan Medical Innovations Center for the design, prototyping and fabrication of the dual axes confocal microscope.
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