ISBI Daily - Saturday

everybody’s collaborative and open. Open science is a big deal now, so I’m really happy about that, but it’s hard to say how it compares to the previous generation. Do you see any area or subarea in this field that nobody is working on and which could present an opportunity for ambitious young scholars? That’s a good question. That’s what I’m here for! [ Laughs ] Yeah, I think there are some spaces where computational imaging would be useful but isn’t being used. I would argue that astronomy is using computational imaging to some degree but could do a lot more. It’s partly because the instruments there are so expensive, and they take such a long time and so many people to build. That’s what makes it difficult for them to consider these wild changes in their hardware in order to do something with computational imaging. However, that’s exactly why it could be useful, because they could potentially get away with cheaper, simpler, faster-built set-ups that do the same thing. I think that’s one space. In electron microscopy, x-ray, it’s becoming very popular now, but it’s only recently happened and maybe should have happened sooner. In your view, which disease or pathology could benefit the most in the future from the development of computational imaging? MRI already is, as I mentioned. One that would have a huge impact is pathology, because it’s such a big deal. There are techniques for computational imaging that should help pathology, but it’s been difficult to push into practice because the medical profession is slow to adopt new things. Totally understandably so, because it’s important that they do things correctly, and they’re busy curing cancer so they don’t have as much time to work on the next way to do it. In medical and health there is certainly a resistance to these new ideas, if only because what they have works and it’s hard to change the way they do things. On the pharmaceutical side, drug discovery using imaging and image analysis techniques. ISBI DAILY Saturday 7 “…they’re busy curing cancer so they don’t have as much time to work on the next way to do it.” Laura Waller