SAN ANTONIO, Jan. 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Seno Medical Instruments, Inc. (Seno Medical), the leader in new technology for breast cancer diagnosis using opto-acoustic (OA/US) imaging to differentiate benign from malignant masses, today announced the winner of the 2017 Best Paper Award at the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) "Photons Plus Ultrasound: Imaging and Sensing" annual conference. This year's award was given to a team of researchers from California Institute of Technology, Washington University in St. Louis, Duke University and Tsinghua University, Beijing who have developed a novel photo-acoustic technology. Seno Medical has sponsored the award for the past eight years, which includes a Certificate of Accomplishment and a $3,000 cash prize.

The conference, held under the auspices of the SPIE/BIOS Photonics West symposium, is the largest international forum for the biomedical opto-acoustics research community, held this week in San Francisco January 27th – 31st. More than 250 papers representing the latest results in imaging and sensing technologies, including both clinical and pre-clinical applications, are presented.

The field of biomedical opto-acoustic (photoacoustic) imaging continues to experience rapid growth. In 2017, the total number of research papers published in peer-reviewed literature on the subject of opto-acoustic imaging exceeded 500, and the total number of papers published on the technology now exceeds 5,000. The number and sophistication of papers reporting on opto-acoustic clinical applications and commercial grade systems have been increasing since the beginning of the 21st century, a trend that became even more prominent at this year's conference. There are approximately 1,000 attendees at the symposium, and the clinical application sessions achieved standing-room-only attendance.
"As a leader in applying opto-acoustic imaging to advance the diagnosis of breast cancer, we know firsthand that these technologies have tremendous potential in improving patient care and outcomes," said Steven Miller, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Seno Medical. "Seno Medical is committed to fostering innovation that helps advance patient care, and we are excited about the increased number and sophistication of papers reporting on opto-acoustic clinical applications and commercial grade systems at this year's conference. The technology described in the award-winning paper has the potential to significantly improve the resolution of whole-body dynamic imaging for small animals used in many areas of medical research from pathology to oncology."

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