Designing Medical Devices with Computational Biophotonics

Nicholas Durris, PhD
Associate Professor
Johns Hopkins University

Abstract: Computational biophotonics pairs optical system design with the development of intelligent algorithms to extract meaningful data from interrogated tissues. With the recent advances in deep learning, there are emerging opportunities to create impactful medical devices by jointly designing data-driven models with novel optical imaging systems. I will present our research in developing and translating computational biophotonics technologies for a variety of healthcare needs, including: (1) non-invasive blood analysis with oblique backillumination capillaroscopy, (2) colorectal cancer prevention with computational colonoscopy, (3) infection screening through catheters with lens free holographic microscopy, and (4) increasing access to eye care in low-resource settings with computational lightfield ophthalmoscopy.

Biography: Nicholas Durris is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and the director of the Computational Biophotonics Laboratory. He is also appointed in the Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Ophthalmology, and the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 2003 and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from UT Austin in 2010. He was an M+Visión Fellow at MIT from 2011 to 2014. In 2013 he co-founded PlenOptika, which he led as CEO until he joined Hopkins in 2016.