Q&A: Christine Hendon wins National Science Foundation award for imaging innovations

As a child, Christine Hendon, MS, PhD, wanted to be a teacher, mostly because she had family members who were also teachers who were inspirations to her. Years later, she proved that dreams really do come true, as she earned her spot as an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Columbia Engineering in New York.

Radiology Business spoke with Hendon, who not only accomplished her dreams, but excelled in her field becoming one of 102 researchers from across the nation to win a Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE), the highest honor the U.S. government gives to young scientists and engineers. She has earned this award for her innovative medical imaging instruments that are used in surgery and breast cancer detection. 

Radiology Business: At what age did you become interested in math and/or science?
Christine Hendon: I was always interested in math and science, but as a child I did not know exactly what an engineer was. It was not until I was a junior and thoroughly researching colleges that I saw that engineers utilized math and physics to create things. My interest in science in general was further deepened through a program I participated in high school called the Institute for Climate and Planets, which was hosted at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space studies. I very much enjoyed conducting research with scientists, and when I started college I immediately involved myself in undergraduate research projects.

What are some goals you would like to accomplish in the medical imaging field?
I will like to see the technologies we are developing translated to the clinic, either through licensing of our intellectual property or by starting new companies. Also, for some of our projects, including my collaboration with Prof. Kristin Myers on imaging the cervix, we will like to understand the structure – function relationship of the cervix and how it relates to pre-term birth.

What type of tools have you worked on as a medical imaging innovator? 
The main tools in our lab that we use are optical coherence tomography and near infrared spectroscopy. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) provides depth resolved, 3D imaging of biological tissue, similar to ultrasound. However, by using light we are able to get higher resolution images that enable us to visualize cellular level or sometimes sub-cellular level features. This is important when we want to see changes in the tissue due to disease and remodeling.

The second technique we are using is near-infrared spectroscopy. This is not an imaging tool like OCT, but it enables us to assess the composition of the tissue. It provides complementary information to OCT.

There were only 102 researchers across the nation who received the Presidential Award, how does it feel to be part of the honorees? 
It’s an incredible honor to receive this award. It’s actually hard to describe in words. I am very grateful for the honor. Receiving an award like this does give me that extra boost of encouragement to keep working, to keep innovating and to keep training researchers in this area.

What other projects are you working on?
In addition to imaging, we are working on advancing image and signal processing of optical signals, to extract information about biomedical samples. Our medical applications range from cardiac electrophysiology, breast cancer and pre-term birth. We work with a very diverse group to achieve the goals of the lab, which is to enable real-time high resolution imaging of biological tissue with optics for monitoring and guidance of therapeutic interventions.