Photonics for a Better World

Ultraviolet image from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows NGC 3242, a planetary nebula frequently referred to as “Jupiter’s Ghost.” Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech Are there any connections between space technologies and healthcare? You bet there is, says Shouleh Nikzad, senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the principal engineer, co-lead, and technical director for JPL’s Medical Engineering Forum. Numerous optics and photonics technologies originally developed for space applications have found their way into consumer and medical markets, Nikzad writes in the April 2017 issue of SPIE Professional magazine . Infrared thermometers, workout machines, compact cameras in mobile phones, and imaging technologies are just a few familiar examples. Ultraviolet imaging is also used in medical applications to reveal disease, as in this image of cancerous brain tissue. ...

Photonics play a major part in restoration of the look of a set of murals by Mark Rothko at Harvard University. Ramesh Raskar , a computational photography expert at the MIT Media Lab, and two students used the idea of light projection in helping to develop a method for art conservation, writing software to isolate the images’ colors one pixel at a time and restore the look of a set of Rothko murals. For the exhibition Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals , showing through 26 July at the Harvard Art Museums, Raskar and his team worked with art historians, conservation scientists, and conservators to develop digital projection technology that restores the appearance of the murals’ original rich colors. The artworks had faded while on display in the 1960s and ’70s in a penthouse dining room on the Harvard University campus, for which they were commissioned. Deemed unsuitable for exhibition, the murals entered storage in 1979 and since then had rarely been seen by the public. Th...