Trey Highland

Trey is a first-year PhD student at Duke University studying Biomedical Engineering. He graduated from Duke with an M.S. in BME (2022) and the University of Alabama - Birmingham with a B.S. of BME (2021). With the BIOS lab, he studies facets of mechanotransduction using combined quantitative phase and FRET images to extract uniquely coupled data.

His previous research includes work at Dr. Margaret Liu's UAB Cellular Therapy Lab where he performed a variety of assays under his graduate research advisor.

Apart from academic research Trey enjoys both listening and playing music, film, and his two cats.

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Student Biomedical Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering

Recent Publications

Spectroscopic analysis of volumetric OCT data for the automated measurement of scatterer size.

Journal Article Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision · September 2025 Spectroscopic optical coherence tomography enables an accurate estimation of scatterer size by computing the correlation distance (CD) function. For calibration and accuracy verification, polystyrene spheres are commonly used as size standards. However, an ... Full text Cite

Enhanced penetration depth in optical coherence tomography and photoacoustic microscopy in vivo enabled by absorbing dye molecules

Journal Article Optica · January 20, 2025 The scattering and absorption of light within biological tissue severely limits the penetration depth of optical imaging techniques. Recently, it has been found that water-soluble, strongly absorbing dye molecules, such as tartrazine, can achieve in vivo t ... Full text Cite

Multimodal segmentation of dynamic subcellular features using quantitative phase imaging and FRET-based sensors [Invited].

Journal Article Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics, image science, and vision · November 2024 Understanding cellular responses to mechanical environmental stimuli is important for cellular mechanotransduction studies. While fluorescence microscopy has been used for aiding mechanotransduction research due to its molecular sensitivity, the ability of ... Full text Cite

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