ENW-XS Grant for Hamed Abbasi
July 23, 2025: Hamed Abbasi has received an NWO Open Competition Domain Science-XS Grant from the Dutch Research Council for his proposal: “Identifying Prognostic Markers of Oral Cancer Using a Novel Computational Microscopy Technique”. In total, 48 from 336 eligible proposals received funding. The ENW-XS grant encourages curiosity-driven research that involves the exploration of a promising idea. Hamed wants to use scattered light microscopy to explore the collagen fiber organization at tumor boundaries in a large oral cancer database in order to provide tailored treatment for high-risk oral cancer patients.
Funding for Two Bioengineering Master Projects
July 2, 2025: Hamed Abbasi has received funding for two bioengineering Master projects from the Delft Bioengineering Institute. In one project (together with Lisanne Rens, faculty of electrical engineering, mathematics and computer science), scattered light microscopy and histological images will be used to create computational models for predicting the invasiveness of oral cancer. Another project (together with Baris Kumru, faculty of aerospace engineering) investigates the correlation between fiber orientation (determined with ComSLI) and mechanical strength in recycled short glass fiber composites of wind turbine blades. We’re still looking for Master students – please contact Hamed if you’re interested!
Presentation at CARES Medical Delta Conference
June 30, 2025: Hamed Abbasi gave a talk and presented a poster at the first CARES conference in the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam. The Medical Delta program CARES (Cancer diagnostics for sustainable health care) is a transdisciplinary collaboration between researchers from TU Delft, Erasmus Medical Center, Leiden University Medical Center, and The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Hamed talked about how computational scattered light imaging can be used for cancer optical diagnostics.
Article on Scattering Polarimetry
June 25, 2025: Our Scattering Polarimetry paper has been featured in an article by Forschungszentrum Jülich. In the paper, published in Scientific Reports, we enable polarization and scattered light microscopy measurements in a single system (Scattering Polarimeter).
Presentations at World of Photonics Congress
June 22-26, 2025: Loes Ettema and Mark Vermeulen have presented their work at the World of Photonics Congress in Munich, Germany. Loes gave a talk about “Exploring backscattered light microscopy for visualizing fiber network organization in intact biological tissues” and Mark presented a poster on “Computational scattered light imaging of 3D-nanofabricated fiber models for an enhanced reconstruction of fiber 3D-orientations and diameters in biological tissues”.
Fourier Ptychographic Scattered Light Microscopy Published in VIEW
May 1, 2025: We have published a paper in VIEW about the combination of Computational Scattered Light Imaging and Fourier Ptychography. Thanks to our collaborators at the Italian National Research Council for the great collaboration!
New Bachelor Student
April 1, 2025: Meike Eskes has joined the Menzel Lab as Bachelor student. She will focus on the computational exploration of collagen organization at tumor boundaries using scattered light imaging. The aim of the project is to analyze the orientation of collagen fibers relative to the tumor boundaries which provides valuable prognostic information. She will be supervised by Dr. Hamed Abbasi.
Meike is a final-year Applied Physics BSc student at TU Delft, with a keen interest in computational modeling and physics.
Successful PhD Defense
January 20, 2025: Franca auf der Heiden has successfully defended her PhD thesis “High-Speed Multi-Modal Scattering Polarimetry for Nerve Fiber Imaging” with distinction. We congratulate Franca on this great work and wish her all the best for her future career!
NWO Open Competition Domain Science-XS Grant
January 9, 2025: The Dutch Research Council has granted our proposal “Enhancing Brain Cancer Surgery: Visualizing Tumor Boundaries and Nerve Pathways with Back-Scattered Light”. In total, 28 from 327 eligible proposals received funding. The ENW-XS grant encourages curiosity-driven research that involves the exploration of a promising idea. We want to explore the use of back-scattered light imaging to visualize fiber networks in brain tissue and tumor samples.
NGF AiNed XS Europe Grant
December 18, 2024: The Dutch Research Council has granted our proposal “AI-Driven Cancer Diagnostics: Explainable and Transparent AI Tools for Personalized Treatment”. With the subsidies from the National Growth Fund AiNed XS Europe, promising ideas and innovative and speculative initiatives in the artificial intelligence domain can be explored. We want to use machine learning approaches to enable automated tissue classification and tumor delineation in cancer tissues measured with scattered light microscopy.