Dr Jeffrey Bamber

Ultrasonic imaging provides essential in-vivo anatomical and functional information that can be used in cancer medicine for early detection, differential diagnosis, staging, biopsy guidance, treatment planning, treatment guidance, and the assessment of response to treatment. Our team’s work aims to enhance these functions by inventing, developing and applying ways of deriving new information from ultrasound signals. Optical methods complement ultrasound, with considerable potential for adding new information to that provided by ultrasound as, for example, in the multiphysics imaging method of photoacoustic imaging.

Our research is strongly translational, from basic physics and technical development, through preclinical studies to clinical evaluation. It supports various fields of application, including:

• Breast and breast cancer assessment
• Skin-cancer diagnosis 
• Assessment of side-effects of breast-cancer treatment 
• Image guidance of treatment (focused-ultrasound, radiotherapy, and surgical resection) 
• Prostate-cancer detection
• The biology of tumour vascularisation and invasion 
• Characterisation of tumour phenotype
• Assessment of tumour response. 

Current research in support of these areas aims to develop and apply several novel biomechanical imaging methods, dynamic tissue tracking, photoacoustic imaging, quantitative microbubble contrast agent kinetics and photoacoustic probes.

The team also provides scientific and technical support for activities in the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. These include assisting with clinical ultrasound research of the Trust, advice to clinical personnel on specific aspects of the safe and effective use of ultrasound, and aiding the purchase of, acceptance testing, quality assurance, acoustic safety testing and first line maintenance of clinical ultrasound equipment.

Jeff Bamber’s medical ultrasound interest began with an MSc developing microthermal measurement of acoustic power in diagnostic ultrasound beams, and continued with a PhD on the ultrasonic characterisation of normal and cancerous tissues. 

Later work included: 

• Improving understanding of the physics of ultrasound image formation and perception
• Inventing and evaluating adaptive speckle noise reduction for ultrasound images
• Initiating the use of Doppler ultrasound to evaluate tumour response and microbubble kinetics for assessing tumour vasculature 
• Creating the first elasticity image using ultrasound 
• Inventing and commercially disseminating freehand strain imaging of tissue elasticity
• Reconstruction of Young’s modulus from strain images and its use for radiation dosimetry
• Extracting mobile fluid and permeability information from strain images
• Co-inventing a microbubble and retrovirus method for highly targeted gene therapy
• Establishing ultrasound and optical methods for skin cancer diagnosis
• Working on novel imaging and tissue tracking methods to guide and monitor high-intensity ultrasound tissue ablation and radiotherapy.

His current and planned research aims to increase the functional and molecular imaging capability of ultrasound, thus providing new tools to experimental cancer biology and helping to personalise cancer treatment by bringing the cost-effectiveness, safety, repeatability, speed and convenience of ultrasonic methods to clinical problems such as assessing tumour aggressiveness and response, and guiding treatment.

Jeff is also a Senior Tutor of the Institute of Cancer Research. He has honorary appointments with the Royal Marsden NHS Trust and the Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust. He greatly values the ability to collaborate with medical colleagues in these hospitals, and colleagues in the biological sciences in the ICR, to carry out clinical and preclinical studies. 

He is a Member of the Institute of Physics, the British Medical Ultrasound Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, the Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers and the International Society for Biophysics and Imaging of the Skin. 

He is past president of the International Association for Breast Ultrasound and past vice-president of the International Society of Skin Imaging. He has been a visiting scientist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, and the Medical Products Group, Imaging Systems, Hewlett-Packard, USA.

Outside of research, Jeff enjoys walking, running, cycling and music (currently playing solo tenor horn in The Cobham Band, a traditional British brass band in the Surrey town of Cobham).