- Email: [email protected]
Lase '90
Conference OE/Lase
Reports
‘90
Los Angeles, California, USA, 14-19 january 1990 For the conference attendee from the optics community there is now a great diversity in style and content of meetings available. The range is from the more intimate one-day meeting organized by the learned societies; through the traditional two or three day, single session, annual or biennial event; to the newer (and often American) ‘jamboree’ event with parallel sessions, multiple symposia, tutorials, exhibitions and apparently everything you could ever ask for. The opinion within the community differs widely on which of these formats (if any) is the most desirable - many well-known conference speakers feel lost at a jamboree event and prefer the ‘old-fashioned’ small meeting where the real business can be done in the breaks between sessions and over lunch. If the meeting is too big, it is possible to spend the entire week being unable to make contact with colleagues from other institutions, which is after all one of the main purposes of travelling abroad to such a conference. The fifth annual OE/Lase meeting was held this year (as it was last year) in the functional (but otherwise very uninteresting and severely polluted) atmosphere of Los Angeles airport, It is a convenient location for both US and overseas travellers and indeed offers the European traveller the possibility of being there at a cost only slightly greater than that applicable to many European destinations, if one chooses their travel package carefully. Facilities for this sort of jamboree conference are indeed good - three nearby hotels offering good meeting rooms and adequate space for an exhibition. Accommodation is available on-site and this convenience makes up for some of the deficiencies of Los Angeles airport. The SPIE have forged ahead very successfully in recent years with the promotion of these major conferences, composed of multiple symposia, in the USA and at an increasing, and to some an alarming, rate in Europe. The organization is good, as is communication with authors and attendees, and hotel discounts are available. The potential danger for everyone is that it is just too big, too diverse and frustrating in that the paper you want to hear next is being presented in a different hotel, five minutes walk away, and while your session has been running late, the other is early, and so you arrive just in time for the summary slide. Specifically, the conference was composed of thirty symposia, running for one to three days during the OE/Lase ‘90 week. The list below shows the main subdivisions of the meeting in what was once the single subject of lasers and their applications: high power lasers and optical computing, laser spectroscopy and biomedical optics, As would be expected from an organization subtitled the ‘International Society for Optical Engineering’,
288
the main thrust of the work presented was in applied laser technology, in the industrial scientific and medical fields. Indeed the rising strength in the latter area is reflected in that one of the sub-conferences was on biomedical optics, and that sub-divided into symposia on laser surgery, optical fibres in medicine and lasertissue interaction. To consider this broad topic first, the quality of any conference can be judged by the quality and range of its speakers, and many clinicians and medical scientists involved in laser applications from surgery to diagnosis were represented by speakers and authors. Sessions were quite well attended and questioning was often informative to the non-specialist. For example, symposia were held on advances in cardiovascular laser angioplasty, reflecting much of the important work going on in this field, particularly important to an overconsuming Western World where heart disease is so prevalent. Short meetings dealt with the use of optical fibres in surgery and invasive treatments, and the use of lasers in dentistry, and British interests were well represented in a further half-day meeting on lasers in dermatology and plastic surgery with speakers from Strathclyde University in Glasgow and the Westminster Hospital contributing to the sessions. The diagnosis aspect of the medical use of lasers was considered in several meetings, including one on optical fibres and sensors in medical diagnosis. As part of this two-day meeting, an informative overview of the rising use of and interest in Raman techniques was given by Carrabba et al from a commercial company, EIC Labs. The physical sensing part of the programme was somewhat curtailed by the withdrawal or rescheduling of two of the four papers and the presentation from the USSR was given by a representative of, and not one of, the authors. Finally engineering aspects of medical laser systems were represented in a further meeting concentrating on diagnosis and control and the use of new wavelengths for medical applications The smallest of the three main symposia was, not unsurprisingly, that devoted to laser spectroscopy, and three of the meetings had a distinctly biological theme: ‘Time-resolved laser spectroscopy in biochemistry’, ‘Bioimaging and two-dimensional spectroscopy’ and ‘Newtechnologies in cytometry and molecular biology’. The first of these included one of the few Poster sessions which formed part of the conference. It is unfortunate that the organizers had not made more use of this now very popular and efficient means of communication of new scientific data and know-how. This was all very much complementary to the medical laser work but the two ‘non-biological’ symposia were the more fundamental ‘Laser photoionization and desorption surface analysis techniques’ - a two-day Optics
Et Laser Technology Vol 22 No 4 1990
Conference Reports rather specialized and apparently sparsely attended meeting - and the curiously named ‘Picosecond and femtosecond spectroscopy from laboratory to real world?’ My report on one of the invited papers on ultrashort pulses by Downer et al of University of Texas would have been more complete had I not been frustrated in trying to find the meeting room by the wide geographical spread of the conference. I was not impressed, by what I heard, that such knowledge would ever escape into the real world, as applications aspects were somewhat clouded by the depth of theory presented, in contrast to the laser surgery meetings which were both interesting and informative to the non-specialist. The largest and most diverse of the symposia was the inappropriately titled ‘High power lasers and optical computing’ which extended in scope much beyond the title, to include optical resonators, practical holography, laser safety, non-linear optics, free-space laser communications and laser diode applications and laser ranging, amongst others. The largest of these meetings was that on high power gas lasers, lasting for three days and covering the main areas of interest by including excimer lasers (three sessions), metal vapour lasers (two sessions) CO/CO2 lasers (two sessions), iodine lasers, and chemical lasers (two sessions). Perhaps the most interesting paper was a plenary presentation by Otter of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory. High power laser research is an integral part of the SD1 work and the climate for that sort of research has changed dramatically in not just the five years of OE/Lase but since last year’s meeting. Otter’s thesis was that high power lasers were good for SD1 needs but he recognized that there were emerging significant trends in this field for the future. Applications of high power lasers would change from the strategic to the tactical, from high power as the prime objective to low/ medium power, and research would be user-driven not technically driven. As a consequence research would focus on system feasibility rather than component feasibility with a need for reliability not just sheer high power. The programme for the future, apart from work on solid state diode laser technology, bore significant hallmarks of the past in considering photolytic iodine lasers, short wavelength chemical lasers, and noble gas dimer lasers (especially argon, Arz*). This latter field is one in which some of us were involved over ten years ago - it is interesting that it is now the scheme of the future. Keeping up with the Russians is not, in Otter’s eyes, building bigger and better but research into Xe atomic lasers in the l-2+ purrregion, where work in the USSR is well ahead of that in USA. A figure for investment in high energy lasers over the last 25 years of >$l bn was mentioned, significant spending indeed! What, I wonder, are the benefits to us all in the laser community of that scale of investment in one narrow subject area? The exhibition accompanying the conference featured Optics Vol22
Et Laser Technology No 4 1990
some 200 exhibitors, ranging from one man operations at a table with a few posters to the big companies like Spectra-Physics, Coherent, Melles Griot etc. There was a wide variety of hardware on display but I feel the exhibition stiered from being split into three separated sites and appeared to lack the scale of the exhibition which accompanies such events as CLEO/IQEC in the Spring. However it is a good opportunity to talk to exhibitors about your problem and queries with their equipment which you may have bought recently, if you were fortunate enough to be funded in a recent grants round. If not, you can always look for the best buys to include in your next proposal - and then sguirm as you discover that the US dollar cost figure magically becomes at least the UK pound figure when you contact the local agents in Britain. Spending a few hours picking up ideas (and literature) was time well spent and pleasant relief from the review paper that had been attended before that failed to live up to its expectations, If one were tempted to spend more time in the USA, the Employment Centre accompanying the conference showed a wide range of opportunities for optics specialists - the market appears healthy and several speakers and exhibitors with British accents and American affiliations testify to the success of the talent traffic (largely one way) across the Atlantic in the past. For those with a need for a rapid update or tutorial on a subject, the organizers offered eighty-two short courses, of various durations and cost, on a very wide range of topics in the laser field. The quality of the speakers seemed good, many are known for their contributions to the field, and the new student of a subject could do worse than sign up for anything from ‘Introduction to Lasers’, through ‘Optical design’ to ‘Ultrasound angioscopy’, at an average cost of about $200 per day. It is pleasant to note another British success at the conference - Dr Graham Watson of the Institute of Urology in London was awarded the Leon Goldman Medical Excellence Award for his work on fragmenting stones with lasers via fibre optics. To sum up, SPIE is often criticized for a poor standard of referencing of papers, too many absentees and an overly ‘commercial’ view of what a conference is about. If ‘commercial’ means ‘well organized and efficient’, then I am all for it and if the organization makes a surplus as a result, that is fine - it ensures they will be there next time to arrange another such event. The interest figures for the last five years are shown in Fig. 1 and reflect a very healthy level of attendance and participation. It is a matter of regret that the amount of material presented from Europe is so small, and Britainin particular was poorly represented with only a few institutions sending representation to this important meeting. It is important that, generally, the standard of conferences is high, whether they be one-day or longer, local or international. It is time-wasting and
289
Conference Attendance
Exhibiting
6000
250
5500
225
r
5000
200
-
4500
175
-
4000
-
F
3500
-
125
-
3000
-
100
-
2500
-
75
-
2000
-
50
-
1500
-
1985
1984 SPIE OE/LASE
symposia
198G
growth
1987
1984-l
1988
1989
1984
1985
1986
1987
Symposium on Laser Safety, and Laser Eye Protection
1989
need for smaller and more intimate events and if by paralleling a series of what would otherwise be diverse symposia it reduces the total number of meetings, that is to the benefit of us all and our weakened travel budgets. If you want to catch up on the papers that were presented, the proceedings will be available as Proc. SPIE Vols 1200 to 1229, from mid-l 990 onwards. If you want to plan to attend in 199 1I the venue is Los Angeles again and the dates are from 20-25 January 1991. Details are available from SPIE, PO Box 10, Bellingham, Washington 98227-0010, USA. You can even miss a year and aim for the 1992 meeting, announced for the same location, from 19-24 January 1992. K. T.V. Gra ttan City University
Eyesafe Laser Systems
California, USA, 16-l 7 January 1990
Penelope K. Galoff and David H. Sliney, Laser Microwave Division of the United States Army Environmental Hygiene Agency (USAEHA), chaired the symposium at a meeting of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Over 60 people were in attendance. Unfortunately, as a result of a last-minute concern on the part of some Department of Defense (DOD) research funding agencies, Sessions 3 and 4 were cancelled for clearance reasons. Some papers from Session 3 on fixed absorbers were slightly modified and included in a final Session 5. None of the original papers on dynamic filters were presented. D.H. Sliney opened the first session by reviewing the
process of setting maximum permissible exposure limits (MPEs). He provided an historical perspective of the origin of some MPEs such as the special limit at 1540 nm. In the late 1960s the US Army was very concerned about laser eye hazards from ruby lasers then about to be introduced into armoured and artillery units. A larger program ensued to determine the best spectral region to produce an ‘eye-safe’ laser, and led to the conclusion that the erbium-glass laser at 1.54 pm would be most suitable. As a result of biological research at that time it was possible to increase pulsed-laser MPEs at that wavelength only by a factor of 100. Although now an anachronism, a wavelength Optics
290
1988
989
frustrating to attend an event of whatever size which does not run to time, where no one seems to know what is happening next and it is obvious that no one has checked out the accommodation arrangements in advance because it is your room that is not available or was not what you asked for on the registration form. As an individual, I find it very satisfying to be part of what I see at a meeting like this: such a large optics community that it reflects the health of the subject and the widespread and diverse interest in it. Balanced against that is the difficulty in making contacts finding anyone at the SPIE President’s reception held during the week illustrates that. There is clearly room for this type of event because only with its size is there an opportunity for a large exhibition and part of the benefit of being there is to see and examine equipment that is new to the market and often not yet available or to be seen in the UK. It does not in any way reduce the
Los Angeles,
companies
-
150
Fig. 1
Reports
8 Laser Technology Vol 22 No 4 1990
Reports
‘90
Los Angeles, California, USA, 14-19 january 1990 For the conference attendee from the optics community there is now a great diversity in style and content of meetings available. The range is from the more intimate one-day meeting organized by the learned societies; through the traditional two or three day, single session, annual or biennial event; to the newer (and often American) ‘jamboree’ event with parallel sessions, multiple symposia, tutorials, exhibitions and apparently everything you could ever ask for. The opinion within the community differs widely on which of these formats (if any) is the most desirable - many well-known conference speakers feel lost at a jamboree event and prefer the ‘old-fashioned’ small meeting where the real business can be done in the breaks between sessions and over lunch. If the meeting is too big, it is possible to spend the entire week being unable to make contact with colleagues from other institutions, which is after all one of the main purposes of travelling abroad to such a conference. The fifth annual OE/Lase meeting was held this year (as it was last year) in the functional (but otherwise very uninteresting and severely polluted) atmosphere of Los Angeles airport, It is a convenient location for both US and overseas travellers and indeed offers the European traveller the possibility of being there at a cost only slightly greater than that applicable to many European destinations, if one chooses their travel package carefully. Facilities for this sort of jamboree conference are indeed good - three nearby hotels offering good meeting rooms and adequate space for an exhibition. Accommodation is available on-site and this convenience makes up for some of the deficiencies of Los Angeles airport. The SPIE have forged ahead very successfully in recent years with the promotion of these major conferences, composed of multiple symposia, in the USA and at an increasing, and to some an alarming, rate in Europe. The organization is good, as is communication with authors and attendees, and hotel discounts are available. The potential danger for everyone is that it is just too big, too diverse and frustrating in that the paper you want to hear next is being presented in a different hotel, five minutes walk away, and while your session has been running late, the other is early, and so you arrive just in time for the summary slide. Specifically, the conference was composed of thirty symposia, running for one to three days during the OE/Lase ‘90 week. The list below shows the main subdivisions of the meeting in what was once the single subject of lasers and their applications: high power lasers and optical computing, laser spectroscopy and biomedical optics, As would be expected from an organization subtitled the ‘International Society for Optical Engineering’,
288
the main thrust of the work presented was in applied laser technology, in the industrial scientific and medical fields. Indeed the rising strength in the latter area is reflected in that one of the sub-conferences was on biomedical optics, and that sub-divided into symposia on laser surgery, optical fibres in medicine and lasertissue interaction. To consider this broad topic first, the quality of any conference can be judged by the quality and range of its speakers, and many clinicians and medical scientists involved in laser applications from surgery to diagnosis were represented by speakers and authors. Sessions were quite well attended and questioning was often informative to the non-specialist. For example, symposia were held on advances in cardiovascular laser angioplasty, reflecting much of the important work going on in this field, particularly important to an overconsuming Western World where heart disease is so prevalent. Short meetings dealt with the use of optical fibres in surgery and invasive treatments, and the use of lasers in dentistry, and British interests were well represented in a further half-day meeting on lasers in dermatology and plastic surgery with speakers from Strathclyde University in Glasgow and the Westminster Hospital contributing to the sessions. The diagnosis aspect of the medical use of lasers was considered in several meetings, including one on optical fibres and sensors in medical diagnosis. As part of this two-day meeting, an informative overview of the rising use of and interest in Raman techniques was given by Carrabba et al from a commercial company, EIC Labs. The physical sensing part of the programme was somewhat curtailed by the withdrawal or rescheduling of two of the four papers and the presentation from the USSR was given by a representative of, and not one of, the authors. Finally engineering aspects of medical laser systems were represented in a further meeting concentrating on diagnosis and control and the use of new wavelengths for medical applications The smallest of the three main symposia was, not unsurprisingly, that devoted to laser spectroscopy, and three of the meetings had a distinctly biological theme: ‘Time-resolved laser spectroscopy in biochemistry’, ‘Bioimaging and two-dimensional spectroscopy’ and ‘Newtechnologies in cytometry and molecular biology’. The first of these included one of the few Poster sessions which formed part of the conference. It is unfortunate that the organizers had not made more use of this now very popular and efficient means of communication of new scientific data and know-how. This was all very much complementary to the medical laser work but the two ‘non-biological’ symposia were the more fundamental ‘Laser photoionization and desorption surface analysis techniques’ - a two-day Optics
Et Laser Technology Vol 22 No 4 1990
Conference Reports rather specialized and apparently sparsely attended meeting - and the curiously named ‘Picosecond and femtosecond spectroscopy from laboratory to real world?’ My report on one of the invited papers on ultrashort pulses by Downer et al of University of Texas would have been more complete had I not been frustrated in trying to find the meeting room by the wide geographical spread of the conference. I was not impressed, by what I heard, that such knowledge would ever escape into the real world, as applications aspects were somewhat clouded by the depth of theory presented, in contrast to the laser surgery meetings which were both interesting and informative to the non-specialist. The largest and most diverse of the symposia was the inappropriately titled ‘High power lasers and optical computing’ which extended in scope much beyond the title, to include optical resonators, practical holography, laser safety, non-linear optics, free-space laser communications and laser diode applications and laser ranging, amongst others. The largest of these meetings was that on high power gas lasers, lasting for three days and covering the main areas of interest by including excimer lasers (three sessions), metal vapour lasers (two sessions) CO/CO2 lasers (two sessions), iodine lasers, and chemical lasers (two sessions). Perhaps the most interesting paper was a plenary presentation by Otter of the Air Force Weapons Laboratory. High power laser research is an integral part of the SD1 work and the climate for that sort of research has changed dramatically in not just the five years of OE/Lase but since last year’s meeting. Otter’s thesis was that high power lasers were good for SD1 needs but he recognized that there were emerging significant trends in this field for the future. Applications of high power lasers would change from the strategic to the tactical, from high power as the prime objective to low/ medium power, and research would be user-driven not technically driven. As a consequence research would focus on system feasibility rather than component feasibility with a need for reliability not just sheer high power. The programme for the future, apart from work on solid state diode laser technology, bore significant hallmarks of the past in considering photolytic iodine lasers, short wavelength chemical lasers, and noble gas dimer lasers (especially argon, Arz*). This latter field is one in which some of us were involved over ten years ago - it is interesting that it is now the scheme of the future. Keeping up with the Russians is not, in Otter’s eyes, building bigger and better but research into Xe atomic lasers in the l-2+ purrregion, where work in the USSR is well ahead of that in USA. A figure for investment in high energy lasers over the last 25 years of >$l bn was mentioned, significant spending indeed! What, I wonder, are the benefits to us all in the laser community of that scale of investment in one narrow subject area? The exhibition accompanying the conference featured Optics Vol22
Et Laser Technology No 4 1990
some 200 exhibitors, ranging from one man operations at a table with a few posters to the big companies like Spectra-Physics, Coherent, Melles Griot etc. There was a wide variety of hardware on display but I feel the exhibition stiered from being split into three separated sites and appeared to lack the scale of the exhibition which accompanies such events as CLEO/IQEC in the Spring. However it is a good opportunity to talk to exhibitors about your problem and queries with their equipment which you may have bought recently, if you were fortunate enough to be funded in a recent grants round. If not, you can always look for the best buys to include in your next proposal - and then sguirm as you discover that the US dollar cost figure magically becomes at least the UK pound figure when you contact the local agents in Britain. Spending a few hours picking up ideas (and literature) was time well spent and pleasant relief from the review paper that had been attended before that failed to live up to its expectations, If one were tempted to spend more time in the USA, the Employment Centre accompanying the conference showed a wide range of opportunities for optics specialists - the market appears healthy and several speakers and exhibitors with British accents and American affiliations testify to the success of the talent traffic (largely one way) across the Atlantic in the past. For those with a need for a rapid update or tutorial on a subject, the organizers offered eighty-two short courses, of various durations and cost, on a very wide range of topics in the laser field. The quality of the speakers seemed good, many are known for their contributions to the field, and the new student of a subject could do worse than sign up for anything from ‘Introduction to Lasers’, through ‘Optical design’ to ‘Ultrasound angioscopy’, at an average cost of about $200 per day. It is pleasant to note another British success at the conference - Dr Graham Watson of the Institute of Urology in London was awarded the Leon Goldman Medical Excellence Award for his work on fragmenting stones with lasers via fibre optics. To sum up, SPIE is often criticized for a poor standard of referencing of papers, too many absentees and an overly ‘commercial’ view of what a conference is about. If ‘commercial’ means ‘well organized and efficient’, then I am all for it and if the organization makes a surplus as a result, that is fine - it ensures they will be there next time to arrange another such event. The interest figures for the last five years are shown in Fig. 1 and reflect a very healthy level of attendance and participation. It is a matter of regret that the amount of material presented from Europe is so small, and Britainin particular was poorly represented with only a few institutions sending representation to this important meeting. It is important that, generally, the standard of conferences is high, whether they be one-day or longer, local or international. It is time-wasting and
289
Conference Attendance
Exhibiting
6000
250
5500
225
r
5000
200
-
4500
175
-
4000
-
F
3500
-
125
-
3000
-
100
-
2500
-
75
-
2000
-
50
-
1500
-
1985
1984 SPIE OE/LASE
symposia
198G
growth
1987
1984-l
1988
1989
1984
1985
1986
1987
Symposium on Laser Safety, and Laser Eye Protection
1989
need for smaller and more intimate events and if by paralleling a series of what would otherwise be diverse symposia it reduces the total number of meetings, that is to the benefit of us all and our weakened travel budgets. If you want to catch up on the papers that were presented, the proceedings will be available as Proc. SPIE Vols 1200 to 1229, from mid-l 990 onwards. If you want to plan to attend in 199 1I the venue is Los Angeles again and the dates are from 20-25 January 1991. Details are available from SPIE, PO Box 10, Bellingham, Washington 98227-0010, USA. You can even miss a year and aim for the 1992 meeting, announced for the same location, from 19-24 January 1992. K. T.V. Gra ttan City University
Eyesafe Laser Systems
California, USA, 16-l 7 January 1990
Penelope K. Galoff and David H. Sliney, Laser Microwave Division of the United States Army Environmental Hygiene Agency (USAEHA), chaired the symposium at a meeting of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Over 60 people were in attendance. Unfortunately, as a result of a last-minute concern on the part of some Department of Defense (DOD) research funding agencies, Sessions 3 and 4 were cancelled for clearance reasons. Some papers from Session 3 on fixed absorbers were slightly modified and included in a final Session 5. None of the original papers on dynamic filters were presented. D.H. Sliney opened the first session by reviewing the
process of setting maximum permissible exposure limits (MPEs). He provided an historical perspective of the origin of some MPEs such as the special limit at 1540 nm. In the late 1960s the US Army was very concerned about laser eye hazards from ruby lasers then about to be introduced into armoured and artillery units. A larger program ensued to determine the best spectral region to produce an ‘eye-safe’ laser, and led to the conclusion that the erbium-glass laser at 1.54 pm would be most suitable. As a result of biological research at that time it was possible to increase pulsed-laser MPEs at that wavelength only by a factor of 100. Although now an anachronism, a wavelength Optics
290
1988
989
frustrating to attend an event of whatever size which does not run to time, where no one seems to know what is happening next and it is obvious that no one has checked out the accommodation arrangements in advance because it is your room that is not available or was not what you asked for on the registration form. As an individual, I find it very satisfying to be part of what I see at a meeting like this: such a large optics community that it reflects the health of the subject and the widespread and diverse interest in it. Balanced against that is the difficulty in making contacts finding anyone at the SPIE President’s reception held during the week illustrates that. There is clearly room for this type of event because only with its size is there an opportunity for a large exhibition and part of the benefit of being there is to see and examine equipment that is new to the market and often not yet available or to be seen in the UK. It does not in any way reduce the
Los Angeles,
companies
-
150
Fig. 1
Reports
8 Laser Technology Vol 22 No 4 1990