Other Awards and Honors
2001 Discover Magazine Awards
Health Category - Combined Optical/Magnetic Resonance Microscope-Robert Wind
This innovation combines the principles of magnetic resonance imaging and confocal microscopy to create a new microscope to study cells. With this new instrument, live cells can, for the first time, be examined simultaneously with two entirely different microscopic techniques. In this way, the information provided by both microscopes can be combined and integrated. This makes it possible to follow cellular events in real time, and in more detail than is possible with each of the microscopes individually.
Findings based on this new technology are likely to have a significant impact on basic cellular research and increase our knowledge of how cells work and respond to stresses, such as exposure to contamination. The technology and its resulting research also may become of great value in medical laboratories and hospitals in improving the detection and diagnosis of diseased cells and in evaluating a patient's response to therapy.
"We're excited about where this technology is taking us because it may allow us to study a variety of cell processes in more detail than ever before, including those of critical importance to such things as cancer diagnosis and therapy," said Robert Wind, who led the multidisciplinary development team.