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Innovation Incentive Initiative - Imaging and Sensing |
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Imaging has become one of the most important tools in medical research and healthcare. Modern imaging equipment is used to diagnose illness and monitor disease, and is becoming an integral part of therapy. Today’s imaging systems have gone well beyond providing simple macroscopic anatomic detail; they are rapidly approaching the capability of imaging functions at the cellular and sub-cellular levels using targeted and non-targeted agents. The range of imaging technologies is rapidly expanding, and includes advanced radiation techniques (high-resolution radiography and CT scans, magnetic resonance, ultrasound, and molecular and nuclear imaging. Newer optical imaging methods such as dual photon and near-infrared microscopy are rapidly expanding our functional and cellular abilities. It is for this reason that significant investments, by the Ohio universities participating in medical research, have been made in imaging research and applications. There are no medical research programs in Ohio universities that will not be impacted by advances in imaging science. The cost of advanced imaging is, however, not insignificant, and must take advantage of shared resource opportunities within Ohio’s university system. Imaging will also play a major role in those Ohio industries which take advantage of the advances at the molecular, cellular and tissue levels to produce products. It is unlikely that industry will be able to afford to duplicate this costly resource, but will rather utilize existing imaging resources in Ohio’s universities to fill their needs.
Imaging also plays an increasingly important role in non-medical applications in physics, chemistry and engineering, especially in materials research. Assessment of ultrastructure in materials development is one such example, as is the use of imaging techniques for nondestructive testing.
Micro- and nano-sensors are playing an increasingly important role in healthcare research. There are very few biological processes that cannot be studied with today’s sensing technology. As an example, sensing technology is playing an increasing role in the application of robotics in medicine, including surgical robotics as well as prosthetics. This is an especially fertile ground of industry recruitment and development into the state. Ohio’s universities are particularly well-placed to provide the workforce for this technology in the future.
Sensors research has multiple applications for the Ohio economy as it is at the “cutting edge” of instrument development. Sensors research results in development of medically relevant sensors as well as environmental and security-oriented sensors, biomedical aspects of proteomics. Such research is very interdisciplinary, involving multiple research collaborations across the University (Engineering, Medicine, A&S) as well as partnerships with local industries such as Yellow Springs Instruments (YSI, Inc.), Procter & Gamble, General Electric, etc.
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