Myelination is a crucial aspect of brain development and is essential for the functioning of the nervous system. Demyelination, on the other hand, is a pathological process that plays an important role in certain diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Accurate measurement of myelin content has the potential to increase our insights into several disease processes. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) enables imaging of features related to (de-)myelination in vivo. Martijn Nagtegaal uses dictionary matching and a joint sparsity multicomponent T2 fit to obtain MWF maps.

Although many on-campus activities were cancelled, the development of the new MAKERSPACE continues steadily. In this makerspace students can tinker and build prototypes.

TU Delft is setting up eight new AI Labs to investigate how artificial intelligence (AI) can accelerate scientific progress. With the IRIS-lab (Intelligent & Reliable Imaging Systems) the involved researchers David Maresca, Arjen J. Jakobi and Carlas Smith want to open the black box of AI and develop methodologies for context-independent, knowledge-based learning of imaging systems that will address fundamental challenges in all quantitative imaging applications.

Many of us are going through a difficult time at the moment. COVID-19 and the measures imposed by the Dutch government and TU Delft affect us all. Everyone is facing major challenges. We asked Dr Maria Sovago – lecturer in physics at the faculty of Applied Sciences – to share her experiences and best practices with us.

Bits&Chips published an article on the development of a multibeam SEM at ImPhys: "Medical and biological scientists are eager to create 3D images for their research at nanometer resolution. However, without an efficient technique to make the scan, the process is difficult and painfully slow. To make this research feasible, ImPhys/TU Delft is teaming up with a consortium of enterprises to develop and innovative device: a multibeam scanning electron microscope".

The paper introduces a new rigorous method to solve electromagnetic scattering problems in the strong scattering regime. Conventional methods such as FDTD, FEM or integral equation methods require computing the solution of a very large set of linear equations.

An NWO-LIFT grant has been awarded to a consortium of researchers including Elizabeth Carroll and Jacob Hoogenboom from ImPhys. In the consortium, further comprising UMC Groningen and ImPhys spin-off Delmic BV, novel microscopy techniques will be used to better visualize and understand structural/functional properties in medical biology, and to create tissue atlases.

"My research group is mainly experimental, combining optics and biology, so certainly our work is altered a lot right now. I see students feeling grief that they will not be able to achieve all of their original BEP/MEP goals.

Read about David Maresca, one of the 'Rising Stars' of the Delft Health Initiative. Maresca is setting up his own lab at ImPhys. He will focus on biomolecular ultrasound imaging.

Jos van Rooij, PhD student in the group of Jeroen Kalkman, published a paper on polarization contrast optical diffraction tomography (ODT) in a recent issue of Biomedical Optics Express. The paper builds on earlier work on large scale high sensitivity ODT where a zebrafish larva was imaged in phase contrast.