Caroline Magnain

Assistant Professor
Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital
Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging
13th Street, Building 149, Room 10123
Charlestown, MA 02129
(617) 726-5815
cmagnain@mgh.harvard.edu

As part of the Optics group and the Laboratories for Computational Neuroimaging, I work on optical microscopy and its use as optical histology for postmortem human. Optical Coherent Tomography/Microscopy (OCT/OCM) is a 3D interferometric imaging technique which relies on the differences in refractive index of scatterers within the tissue. It is analogue to ultrasound in that way. It provides high resolution (1 μm) cross sectional imaging, as well as high resolution 3D volume up to several hundreds of microns in depth of biological tissues, in-situ, contact-free and non-invasively (no staining required). Due to their optical properties, myelinated fibers and body cells can then be imaged and their organization can be studied. The results could be seen as an optical histology. I have been involved in improving the OCT system in order to acquire larger volume of sample automatically using automated stages and slicing device. I am also focused on image processing in order to extract the maximum of information contained in the data, such as cell bodies size, shape and density, fibers organizations for example and validating those results with histology. Moreover, I have experience with correlating the optical data with MRI acquisition. Since March 2019, I am responsible for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative High Resolution Optical Core, where I maintain the optical instrumentation (two-photon microscopes and OCT) as well as train users in their safe and independent use.