On March 12th, Dr. Simon Barriga, Chief Research Scientist at VisionQuest Biomedical LLC in Albuquerque, gave his talk “Advances in Imaging of the eye: Is the End of Blindness in Sight?” at the Canyon Club as part of the Joint Chapter talk series.

In 2013 Dr. Barriga received the Outstanding Young Engineer award from our Section at the Joint Sigma Xi – IEEE banquet and his talk gave us the opportunity to learn more about his work and efforts to help save people’s sight.

As part of his award and in recognition for all his work to advance the area of medical imaging,  Dr. Barriga received a check from the Section, which was represented at the talk by its Chair, Dr. Gilberto Zamora, and its Secretary, Dr. Ray Byrne.

Dr. Barriga’s talk focused on research efforts to minimize vision loss from the fourth leading causes of blindness: Cataracts, age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma.

On the topic of diabetic retinopathy, he described his work at VisionQuest Biomedical to develop and commercialize software tools for the automatic screening of the disease using telemedicine and advanced digital signal processing techniques.

Besides his own work, Dr. Barriga described the role of imaging technologies such digital fundus photography, optical coherence tomography, and adaptive optics as tools to provide visualization of lesions and defect on the retina.

Dr. Barriga concluded his talk with a view into the future of vision prosthetics (bionic eyes) as a way to help people who otherwise would be blind.

The talk was attended by more than 30 members of the Section and their companions. This was one of the best attended talks and one with the most questions asked to the speaker afterwards.

The Section wants to thank Dr. Barriga for his hard work in support of the EE profession and his great talk. The Section also thanks the Joint Chapter for organizing the talk and The Canyon Club for its excellent dinner and service.

We hope to you see you at the next Joint Chapter talk. Check the website for announcements and updates.

Thank you.

Gilberto (Chair)