The funhouse mirror: the I in personalised healthcare.

Precision Medicine is driven by the idea that the rapidly increasing range of relatively cheap and efficient self-tracking devices make it feasible to collect multiple kinds of phenotypic data. Advocates of N = 1 research emphasize the countless opportunities personal data provide for optimizing individual health. At the same time, using biomarker data for lifestyle interventions has shown to entail complex challenges.

High-Resolution Imaging of Intracellular Calcium Fluctuations Caused by Oscillating Microbubbles.

Ultrasound insonification of microbubbles can locally enhance drug delivery, but the microbubble-cell interaction remains poorly understood. Because intracellular calcium (Ca) is a key cellular regulator, unraveling the Ca fluctuations caused by an oscillating microbubble provides crucial insight into the underlying bio-effects. Therefore, we developed an optical imaging system at nanometer and nanosecond resolution that can resolve Ca fluctuations and microbubble oscillations.

Opening of endothelial cell-cell contacts due to sonoporation.

Ultrasound insonification of microbubbles can locally increase vascular permeability to enhance drug delivery. To control and optimize the therapeutic potential, we need to better understand the underlying biological mechanisms of the drug delivery pathways. The aim of this in vitro study was to elucidate the microbubble-endothelial cell interaction using the Brandaris 128 ultra-high-speed camera (up to 25 Mfps) coupled to a custom-built Nikon confocal microscope, to visualize both microbubble oscillation and the cellular response.

Combined Confocal Microscope and Brandaris 128 Ultra-High-Speed Camera.

Controlling microbubble-mediated drug delivery requires the underlying biological and physical mechanisms to be unraveled. To image both microbubble oscillation upon ultrasound insonification and the resulting cellular response, we developed an optical imaging system that can achieve the necessary nanosecond temporal and nanometer spatial resolutions. We coupled the Brandaris 128 ultra-high-speed camera (up to 25 million frames per second) to a custom-built Nikon A1R+ confocal microscope.

Towards precision medicine; a new biomedical cosmology.

Precision Medicine has become a common label for data-intensive and patient-driven biomedical research. Its intended future is reflected in endeavours such as the Precision Medicine Initiative in the USA. This article addresses the question whether it is possible to discern a new 'medical cosmology' in Precision Medicine, a concept that was developed by Nicholas Jewson to describe comprehensive transformations involving various dimensions of biomedical knowledge and practice, such as vocabularies, the roles of patients and physicians and the conceptualisation of disease.