About Us

The Dean Lab develops imaging technologies that make rare and spatially complex biological events measurable.

We work at the interface of microscopy, software, molecular labeling, tissue biology, and computational image analysis. Our central goal is to build tools that connect large-scale biological context with high-resolution molecular and cellular measurements.

Much of our work is motivated by a simple problem: important biological events are often difficult to observe directly. In cancer, early metastatic colonization may involve small numbers of cells distributed across large tissue volumes. In cell biology, signaling and morphological changes can occur across multiple spatial and temporal scales. In tissue imaging, the relevant biology may require preserving architecture while measuring molecular, cellular, and microenvironmental features.

To address these problems, we build microscopes, software, sample-preparation workflows, and analysis routines that allow researchers to ask questions that would otherwise be technically inaccessible.

Mission

Our mission is to develop, apply, and disseminate advanced imaging technologies for biological discovery.

We aim to create tools that are powerful enough for technology-development laboratories, practical enough for collaborative biological research, and documented well enough for broader adoption by the imaging community.

The lab focuses on four connected goals:

  • building autonomous and adaptive microscopes

  • developing open-source imaging software and hardware

  • increasing the molecular information content of microscopy

  • applying these technologies to cancer biology and complex tissues

How We Work

The Dean Lab is both a technology-development lab and a collaborative biology lab.

We design optical systems, write microscope-control software, develop image-analysis workflows, and build experimental pipelines for imaging large and complex biological specimens. We then apply these technologies with collaborators who have biological questions that cannot be answered with standard imaging approaches.

Our projects often combine:

  • light-sheet microscopy

  • oblique-plane microscopy

  • adaptive and autonomous acquisition

  • tissue clearing and expansion microscopy

  • cyclic molecular multiplexing

  • biosensors and optical probes

  • computational image analysis

  • large-scale data handling and visualization

The lab is especially interested in workflows that reduce the tradeoff between field of view, resolution, molecular content, and throughput.

How Are We Different?

The Dean Lab builds complete imaging workflows rather than isolated instruments or analysis scripts.

A typical project may involve sample preparation, labeling strategy, optical design, microscope automation, image acquisition, data management, segmentation, quantitative analysis, visualization, and biological interpretation. This end-to-end approach allows us to optimize the entire experimental pipeline around the biological question.

We are particularly interested in “smart” imaging strategies where microscopes do more than passively collect images. Our goal is to build systems that can survey large specimens, recognize relevant features, and adapt acquisition to collect the right data at the right scale.

Collaboration

We work with basic scientists, clinicians, engineers, computational researchers, and core facilities to develop imaging strategies for difficult biological problems. Good collaborative projects typically involve a clear biological question, a meaningful imaging bottleneck, and a need for quantitative analysis.

Examples of strong fits include:

  • rare-event detection in large tissues

  • spatial analysis of cancer and tissue microenvironments

  • live-cell signaling and morphology

  • molecular multiplexing and tissue labeling

  • large-scale light-sheet imaging

  • image-analysis pipeline development

  • microscopy technology dissemination

Open Tools & Dissemination

A major goal of the Dean Lab is to make advanced microscopy more accessible.

We develop and share open-source software, hardware documentation, analysis workflows, and training material through GitHub, public documentation, publications, and direct collaboration. Our tools include microscope-control software, light-sheet microscopy platforms, and computational workflows for large imaging datasets.

We view dissemination as part of the scientific work. A technology is more valuable when other researchers can understand it, reproduce it, adapt it, and use it to answer new biological questions.