Bio :

Chiara Paviolo is a project leader at CEA, working at the interface of engineering, physics and biology. After a PhD in biomedical engineering and a first PostDoc in Australia, she moved to Bordeaux (France) as a Marie-Curie fellow. In 2021 she joined CEA as an R&D engineer on novel microscopy techniques coupled with neural networks. Chiara is now the scientific coordinator of different academic and industrial projects and responsible of the 3D optical imaging development in the laboratory of ‘’Optical instrumentation and data-processing for in vitro imaging’.

Abstract :

To obtain evidence of the processes underlying cancer, we have developed a novel microscope where hardware and software are seamlessly integrated, and uses computational neural networks to determine the evolution of cell phenotypes. The software relies heavily on the use of neural networks for image formation, cell analysis, cell fate prediction and decision making to i) image and analyse in quasi real-time, cell behaviours of thousands of cells in parallel ii) identify variations in cell-state indicative of disease origin, iii) pinpoint the location of the cell of interest and the hardware will allow it to iv) pick-up cells for bio-analysis as a final step. While the live cell imaging will provide information about the past of the cell, the molecular analysis would reflect the present biological state of the cell and the prediction algorithm would then suggest the future state of the cell. The framework we propose is disruptive - we imagine a future where live cell microscopy and biomolecular analysis will form a continuum to generate a comprehensive biological timestamp for any cell of interest.