{"id":126688,"date":"2022-07-20T11:18:38","date_gmt":"2022-07-20T15:18:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=119483"},"modified":"2022-10-31T15:47:06","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T19:47:06","slug":"a-leap-forward-in-lung-imaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2022\/07\/20\/a-leap-forward-in-lung-imaging\/","title":{"rendered":"A Leap Forward in Lung Imaging"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hadi Nia earns a Beckman award<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Patrick L. Kennedy<\/strong><\/p>\n

More than 230,000 Americans contracted lung cancer last year, and for many it was a death sentence\u2014more than half of lung cancer victims die within a year of diagnosis. And yet, the lung is something of a black box, says Assistant Professor Hadi Nia<\/a> (BME<\/a>, MSE<\/a>). The existing ways to study it have unfortunate flaws.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Hadi Nia (BME)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWith CT or MRI, you can image the entire lung, but the resolution is poor\u2014you can\u2019t see the air sacs and capillaries that are affected in early stages of tumor development,\u201d explains Nia. \u201cWith histology, the resolution is high, but it\u2019s a snapshot\u2014you can\u2019t see the dynamics of the fluids involved in respiration and circulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the Beckman Foundation<\/a> has named Nia a 2022 Beckman Young Investigator: The award of $600,000 over four years will help Nia and colleagues pioneer the next generation of lung imaging technology.<\/p>\n

Key to several vital functions, the lung is one of the most complex and mechanically active organs, as it expands and extracts while processing air and blood.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to see the air sacs, capillaries, and cells in action, you need optical microscopy,\u201d Nia says. \u201cBut the ribcage is blocking the optic.\u201d The solution Nia has devised is a system for ex vivo studies with a ventilator and perfusion pump to keep the lung functioning and, crucially, a see-through container. Nia has termed it a \u201ccrystal ribcage,\u201d for the clarity it provides.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve designed our own ribcage, with the similar geometry and properties of an actual ribcage, but this one is transparent,\u201d says Nia. His team<\/a> is also developing a staging area that will allow the lung, curved as it is, to be examined from any angle by either an upright or inverted microscope.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve started from scratch on almost everything,\u201d Nia says.<\/p>\n

The Beckman Foundation, which was founded by scientific instrument pioneer Arnold O. Beckman, gave Nia the award based on his early success in this line of research with animal models. By the end of the grant term, Nia\u2019s goal is to scale up his \u201cLungEx\u201d technology to study human lungs. The particular aim of the grant is to research primary lung cancer, but the technology might be used to study any number of pulmonary diseases, from fibrosis to COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Nia\u2019s collaborators on the project include Professor Bela Suki<\/a> (BME), as well as School of Medicine faculty Giovanni Ligresti<\/a>, Katrina Traber<\/a>, and Sarah Mazzilli<\/a>, and Joseph Mizgerd<\/a>, who have provided expertise on pulmonary diseases.<\/p>\n

Nia credits the Neurophotonics Center<\/a> with providing imaging equipment and expertise, and Suki with getting him interested in the lung. \u201cI\u2019d studied many tumor types\u2014everything except lung,\u201d Nia says. \u201cThen I came to BU, and I saw that the lung was such an interesting organ, with so many open questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lung image by Robina Weermeijer<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hadi Nia earns a Beckman award By Patrick L. Kennedy More than 230,000 Americans contracted lung cancer last year, and for many it was a death sentence\u2014more than half of lung cancer victims die within a year of diagnosis. And yet, the lung is something of a black box, says Assistant Professor Hadi Nia (BME, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2662,"featured_media":128690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,899],"tags":[889,715,890,891],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126688"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128291,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126688\/revisions\/128291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}