The Optical & Biomedical Engineering Laboratory - At the Interface of Optics, Medicine and Biology

Needle probe image of rat lungs. A: OCT image acquired from one rotation of the needle probe. Dashed green vertical line shows location of the longitudinal image shown in B. B: Longitudinal OCT image showing a bronchiole and multiple vessels. Dashed cyan vertical line shows location of the radial image shown in A. C: Hematoxylin and eosin-stained histology of the same section of tissue. n: needle hole. b: bronchiole. v1, v2, v3: blood vessels.

Image source: The Optical & Biomedical Engineering Laboratory

Medicine

The Optical+Biomedical Engineering Laboratory (OBEL) is in the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at The University of Western Australia in Perth, Western Australia.

OBEL’s research is in the fields of biomedical optics, biophotonics, and optical microscopy. It is conducted at the interfaces of the disciplines of optics, biomedical engineering, biology and clinical medicine. We study new ideas and seek deeper understanding of basic optical interactions in tissues, as well as build instrumentation and deploy it in imaging and diagnostic applications with collaborators in medicine and biology.

We develop new capabilities and solve existing problems based on the use of light.

Our activities include:

- theory and modeling of optical techniques and optical interactions in tissue;

- building and designing optical and photonics experiments and systems;

- engineering imaging systems and instruments for clinical medical use;

- conducting collaborative research in medical and biological applications.

You can find our publications here.

Most of our work in in optical coherence tomography, and with our collaborators, we have pioneered imaging in airways, imaging burn scars, OCT microscope-in-a-needle and OCT elastography. Latterly polarisation-sensitive OCT is becoming a major interest, as is imaging lymphatic capillaries and vessels in vivo.

En-face OCT image of a transverse section of an excised pig bronchus.

We undertake the full spectrum of activities from theory and modelling to new methods and techniques to building instruments to applying them to real problems, especially in the clinic. We have a wide range of roles and projects for electrical engineers, software engineers, mechanical/mechatronics engineers, optical engineers, physicists, mathematicians, biologists, and biotechnologist. 

Get in touch!

For more information please contact Prof. David Sampson.