Conferences and ZEN

In the end of April, UL SPIE member Tatjana Pladere took part in the international conference “SPIE Structured Light” in Yokohama, Japan. She shares her thoughts about the event.

Participants of the conference in the Zen Buddhism temple

“SPIE Structured Light is the youth meeting on novel technology for next-generation biomedical imaging. Interestingly, it actually consists of two from fourteen scientific conferences held at the same time in the Optics and Photonics International Congress (OPIC), which is organized annually in Yokohama, a lovely port city. If you apply for the first time, you may be slightly confused because there is a vast variety of conferences and only some of them correspond to SPIE.Turns out it is the largest event on optics and photonics in Japan and one of the largest in the field worldwide! The objective of OPIC is to discuss the future of our society, which will be realized by optics and photonics. For this important reason, traditionally, the congress is held in co-operation with technology exhibition, partially devoted to biomedical equipment. The beginning of OPIC was truly unusual. The conference organizers invited us to experience Zen meditation in one of the oldest temples of Zen Buddhism in Japan. Since it was my first time attending the congress and visiting Japan, Zen meditation seemed to be the perfect choice to start the week and learn something new. In the temple, charismatic and friendly Vice Abbot introduced us to the key principles of Zen philosophy and participants experienced the seated meditation. It was an excellent boost of energy and concentration required for the conference.

UL SPIE member Tatjana Pladere

Overall, there were many outstanding presentations and interesting ideas in the poster sessions during the two conference days. Most of all I enjoyed the report delivered by Israel scientist Joseph Rosen from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He spoke about a novel technical solution for refining the image resolution in holographic devices.Later in the poster session, I presented the results of the research work on studying visual perception of a volumetric multi-planar display in the poster session. It was a nice chance to discuss the future technologies of biomedical imaging with conference participants who develop varying innovative devices. Pure inspiration and some useful ideas!
I would like to thank University of Latvia and LightSpace Incorporation for the opportunity to present the scientific results in the conference and learn more about actual challenges in the field.”