Maxina Sheft

Maxina Sheft is a graduate student in medical engineering and medical physics merging photonics with signal processing for real-time tissue visualization during neurosurgery. She develops polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (PS-OCT) systems for intraoperative guidance in deep brain stimulation procedures. Current surgical imaging lacks the micron-scale resolution needed for optimal targeting accuracy. To address this gap, Maxina designs optical probes and computational frameworks to visualize brain tissue microstructure in real time. MATLAB supports the development of physics-based signal processing methods for extracting polarization states from high-dimensional PS-OCT data, leveraging matrix transformations to robustly recover tissue optical properties. She integrates image processing and multimodal registration algorithms to align intraoperative PS-OCT with preoperative MRI scans for surgical guidance. As a MathWorks Fellow, Maxina will expand automated image analysis pipelines to systematically validate PS-OCT across clinical tissue types. Her work could transform optical coherence tomography into a practical intraoperative imaging modality improving neurosurgical outcomes.