Introduction

The field of optical coherence tomography (OCT) has blossomed dramatically since some of the first work by various researchers around the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Since then, there have been dozens of companies created, hundreds of research groups working on OCT, thousands of research articles published, millions of patients scanned with OCT, hundreds of millions of venture capital and corporate R&D dollars invested, hundreds of millions of dollars in company acquisitions, and billions of dollars of revenue created.  The United States government and other governments around the world have been big supporters of funding for research and development in the area of OCT.  This includes funding for basic science and technology as well as applications of the technology including clinical trials.  It is interesting to analyze the funding data over the past decade to try and see trends such as the growth in funding, the funding recipients, what was accomplished with the taxpayer dollars, and what might lie ahead in the future.  This paper cannot answer these questions with high precision, but does attempt to shed some light on the overall picture.

 

Figure 1: 10 Years of Government OCT Funding

What is OCT funding?

It is difficult to determine what constitutes OCT funding and it is not easy to get access and compile from all the data from the various government agencies around the world.  Fortunately there are several government funding agencies that do a good job compiling historical grant data and making that data available to the public.  This report pulls data from about 10 different sources in the USA, United Kingdom, Canada, and the European Union.  It is clear that there 100’s if not 1000’s of government funding sources that are not included here (e.g. different states in the USA, individual countries Europe, different provincial funding sources in Canada, etc) and many other countries funding OCT (Japan, Australia, China, Russia, etc).  It is not a goal of this article to imply that the USA is the main government that is funding advances in OCT.  It is quite clear that OCT research, and government funding of that research, in many other countries is equally vibrant and important.  In fact it looks like funding for basic OCT science and technology development outside the USA is much larger than that within the USA.   It’s just that the author of this article is not yet familiar with all the publicly available data bases in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere around the world.  Readers are encouraged to submit information on such data bases to the author for a future update to this article.

Also it is not easy to determine what an OCT-related grant is.  Does a  grant on laser development that can be used for multiple purposes including OCT qualify as an OCT grant?  Does a grant on a clinical trial of a drug that happens to use OCT imaging along with several other ophthalmic imaging techniques as part of the evaluation protocol qualify as an OCT grant?  The approach used in this analysis is, if the title, abstract, or summary of the grant mentioned “Optical Coherence Tomography” then it was counted as an OCT grant.  Thus, this analysis includes grants that develop OCT technology, as well as any grants where OCT is used as a tool in basic science and clinical investigations.  As such it probably represents an upper bound on OCT funding since there are several examples where OCT is mentioned in abstracts or summaries of clinical trials, particularly ophthalmic clinical trials, where OCT is not the central focus of the work. 

There are various criteria that often accompany funding from government agencies including criteria such as matching fund requirements, whether or not overhead chargers apply (can vary from 0% to nearly 50%) and whether salaries of PIs and co-PIs can be allocated.   Thus a dollar from one funding agency cannot necessarily be equated one for one with another agency.  This article does not delve into these issues. Also upon comparing the funding data pulled from the government data bases with some data directly from of the principal investigators it is clear that there are some inconsistencies between what the PIs have received and what is in the data bases. In some cases the PIs have received substantially more funding than listed in this article. 

A Decade of Government OCT Grants

Figures 2-5 show the yearly and cumulative US funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF); combined UK funding from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC), and Medical Research Council (MRC); and combined Canadian funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), and National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC) in OCT since 2000.  Funding for both academic and for-profit (e.g. SBIR) entities is included.  The NIH funding has grown in an impressive way from about $5M in 2000 to $65M in 2010, while the NSF and UK and Canadian funding have fluctuated from year to year. The UK and Canadian funding show more of an uptrend compared with NSF funding which appears to be a down trend.  The total NIH funding in 2010 was up 25% over the funding in 2009 (2011 is only a partial year).  Figure 2 shows that the total NIH OCT related funding as of March 2011 was $336M whereas the total NSF OCT funding was about $15M and the UK EPSRC/BBSRC/MRC OCT funding was similar a $19M (Note the MRC data base only went back to 2005), and the total Canadian funding was about $7M.  The Canadian funding does not include funding for numerous other sources such as the National Research Council of Canada, NRCC, (a big contributor to OCT research) and various federal and provincial funding. Note that in several cases the various data bases searched allocated all the funding in the year that the grant was started vs spread out and expensed over the duration of the program.  This accounts for some of the odd profiles in the yearly funding plots.  For some of the larger grants this data was spread out over the funded years

It is important to point out that the NIH and other funding number does not include all the intramural research on OCT related topics, which are substantial.  For the NIH alone, such intramural OCT funding could easily be in excess 10% of $336M (or $34M) over this time frame.  Finally there are many other US Government agencies that fund internal or external OCT research including DOD labs, DOE Labs, DARPA, AFOSR, NIST, NASA, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC), and other government labs and programs.  For example, the Medical Free Electron Laser Program had funding requirements tied to it that gave substantial support to many biophotonics research efforts at various universities.  Funding from a program run out of AFOSR was a big enabler to US OCT research, especially in the early days dating back to 1990.  Over $40M of funding was provided by the AFOSR for biomedical optics during the past decade, much of it related to OCT and a large fraction of that funding went to support novel work at the Massachusetts General Hospital.  Based on known OCT-related projects, the total of external and internal US OCT related funding from these sources over the past decade is probably in excess of $100M.  Thus the total US Government funding could easily have easily passed $500M over the past decade.  Worldwide funding would be even higher. 

 

Figure 2: Yearly & Cumulative NIH OCT Funding (Note 2011 is a partial year result).  Red line is cumulative and goes with right hand vertical axis.

 

Figure 3: Yearly and Cumulative NSF OCT Funding (Note 2011 is a partial year result).  Red line is cumulative and goes with right hand vertical axis.

 

Figure 4: Yearly and Cumulative UK OCT Funding (Note 2011 is a partial year result).  Red line is cumulative and goes with right hand vertical axis.

 

Figure 5: Yearly and Cumulative Canadian OCT Funding (Note 2011 is a partial year result).  Red line is cumulative and goes with right hand vetical axis.

In addition to the EPSRC/BBRSC/MRC grants, the UK has several other OCT funding sources but the access to this data base was limited and not included here.  The European Union also has a have a strong commitment to funding academic research on basic science and technology and for-profit entities for OCT.  For example Peter Andersen, a leading OCT researcher at the Technical University of Denmark is the project coordinator for a program dedicated to functional extensions of OCT (Project www.funoct.eu).  FUNOCT has 6 partner organizations in 3 countries and is backed with $7.7M (5.4 M€) from the European Commission over four years. Dr. Andersen also coordinated the project NANO UB-SOURCES, backed with $3.1M (2.2 M€) from the European Commission over three years, focused on developing novel, low-cost broad-bandwidth light sources for OCT based on quantum dot based SLDs.  The PROPHET (http://www.prophet-itn.eu/) program includes funding for fast tunable laser sources for OCT in Life Science Applications.  There are numerous other examples of EU programs that sponsor OCT research and Table 2 shows a short list of some example programs totalling ~$30M over the past decade.  Note that in Table 2 the PI and organization are not listed, as often these grants are large European consortiums with many partners in many countries (and worked on many things in addition to OCT).  Note that there is a large amount of EU funding not included in this CORDIS data base or elsewhere in this article.  The total EU, European Country, and Regional Government funding is probably far in excess of the $30M listed in Table 2.  

 

Project URL Acronym	Start Date	Value ($)	Project Title
		$30,394,666
CTIAC	04/01/96	$3,600,000	Computational tools and industrial applications of complexity
None Listed	01/01/01	$1,577,870	Optical methods for medical diagnosis and monitoring of diseases
None Listed	01/01/02	$288,000	Training on optical devices, configurations and techniques applied in biomedical optics
UROCT	02/01/02	$589,948	Ultrahigh resolution ophthalmologic optical coherence tomography (UROCT)
IPC-OCT	02/01/04	$1,377,174	In process control with optical coherence tomography
SURGICAL IMAGING SYS	01/17/05	$169,344	Optical coherence tomography (OCT) based surgical imaging system
NANO UB-SOURCES	09/01/05	$3,167,958	Ultrabroad bandwidth light sources based on nano-structuring devices
INFO-FOCT	04/01/06	$413,353	Information in functional optical coherence tomography and microscopy
HIRESOMI	05/01/06	$3,323,120	Training in Methods and Devices for Non-Invasive High Resolution Optical Measurements and Imaging
QUPOM	07/01/06	$360,000	Reinforcing research center for quantum and optical metrology
FUN OCT	04/01/08	$7,792,875	Functional optical coherence tomography
HHG-NANOTOMOGRAPHY	05/01/09	$467,338	High-Harmonic tomography and characterization of Nano-structures
INSIDEFOOD	05/01/09	$4,078,486	Integrated sensing and imaging devices for designing, monitoring and controlling microstructure of foods
LASERGLASS	05/25/09	$64,800	Laser technologies in the analysis, conservation and restoration of historic stained glass windows
COGATIMABIO	05/01/10	$2,878,907	Combined time domain and spectral domain coherence gating for imaging and biosensing
3D3CSI	01/01/11	$245,493	Three-dimensional Clinical Coherent Chemically-sensitive Imaging

 Table 2: European Commission CORDIS OCT Grant Data.

 

It is clear that the NIH has funding has been substantial.  Much of this may be associated with large and expensive multi-institution clinical trials.  In the absence of NIH funding the US may lag in funding more basis science and technology for OCT.  A closer look at the NIH sub-agency breakdown is shown in Figure 6 (and Table 1 below). The National Eye Institute (NEI), National Cancer Institute (NCI), and National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) have been the top three funding institutes with $131M, $52M, and $42M of grants, respectively.  It is not surprising that the NEI is the biggest source of funding, representing almost 40% of funding, since ophthalmology is the most mature OCT application and there are numerous clinical trials directly or indirectly related to the use of OCT.  Some of the grants in this NEI section are not strictly OCT grants, but are grants that utilize or cite OCT as mentioned above. This represents a skew in the data.  What may be a little surprising is that since cardiology and cancer represent much larger fractions of the NIH budget, why are they not a larger fraction of the NIH OCT spending?  The answer is probably a combination of the fact that only recently have commercial cardiovascular and oncology products received FDA clearance and the application of OCT in these fields is still new compared to ophthalmology.  The fraction of NIH expenditure may change in the future and tilt toward these larger clinical areas.

 

Figure 6: NIH OCT Funding Breakdown by Funding Agency

Where Did The Money Go?

Figures 7-14 (and Tables 3-10 below) show data on the recipients that have received NIH, NSF, UK EPSRC/BBRSC/MRC, and Canadian NSERC/CIHR/NCIC funding from our simplified search of some of the government data bases.  As noted elsewhere, althought only one funded organization and principal investigator is listed in these charts and tables very often these grants are actually to multiple investigators and multiple institutions and only the institution or principal investigator listed as the point of contact is used here.  For NIH funding, Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Southern California, and University of California at Irvine have been the top three recipients with $28M, $24M, and $18M respectively.  The top ten institutions take about 50% of the funding and the top 25 recipients take about 75% of the $336M in funding. For NSF funding, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Duke University represent the top three recipients with just over $1M each.  David Huang, Lihong Wang, Rohit Varma, Michael Ip, Gary Tearney, Mark Brezinski, John Werner, James Fujimoto, Stephen Boppart, and Bruce Tromberg are the top ten NIH OCT funding recipients (listed as PIs on the grants) and all have received in excess of $5M in funding.  Stephen Boppart, James Fujimoto, and Joseph Izatt are the top three NSF OCT Fund recipients (listed as PIs on the grants) and all have received about $1M in funding.  Ralph Tatam, Richard Hogg, Adrian Podoleanu, Ruikang Wang, Harry Coles, Steve Matcher, Rodney Smallwood, and Haida Liang are the top UK funding recipients and all received in excess of $1M.  Note that some of these EPSRC/BBSRC/MRC programs are for more generic technology development (not mainly OCT) but in keeping with the original search criterion they were included.  Alex Vitkin, Victor Yang, Marinko Saurnic, Kostadinka Bizheva, Thomas Tiedje, and Brian Wilson are the top 6 Canadian fund recipients receiving in excess of $0.5M. 

It is important to point out that this data is based on the PI “Point of Contact” listed on the grant and often the larger grants are collaborative efforts with many co-PIs spread across several institutions.  Therefore the funding levels mentioned do not necessarily represent the funding that a single institution of investigator received. This is particularly true for the large NSF grants and NIH grants that sponsored ophthalmic clinical trial oriented studies which can involve half a dozen or more institutions collecting data over an extended period of time necessary to perform clinical studies.  NSF biomedical engineering programs typically provide smaller amounts of support, except in cases where multiple investigators are collaborating.  Also note that each of the top funded organizations and PIs has a long history of major accomplishments in OCT dating back to the early 1990’s in some cases.  As a result they have built up a strong record of scientific achievement, strong research groups and infrastructure, and credibility with the funding sources which result in a deserved large fraction of the funding pie. It is also important to point out that the the picture is very different in a recent slice of time (e.g. 2010 only) where the funding allocations are quite different across various organizations and PIs.
  

Figure 7: NIH OCT Funding by Lead Recipient Organization. 

 

Figure 8: NSF OCT Funding by Lead Recipient Organization. 

 

Figure 9: UK EPSRC/BBRSC/MRC OCT Funding by Lead Recipient Organization. 

 

Figure 10: Canadian NSERC/CIHR/NCIC OCT Funding by Lead Recipient Organization. Note that some of these separately listed institutes are actually the same institute.  For example the University Health Network is comprised of the Ontario Cancer Institute and Toronto Western Hospital and both affiliated with the University of Toronto.

 

Figure 11: NIH OCT Funding Breakdown by Listed Principal Investigator.

 

Figure 12: NSF OCT Funding Breakdown by Listed Principal Investigator.

 

Figure 13: UK EPSRC/BBRSC/MRC OCT Funding Breakdown by Listed Principal Investigator.

 

Figure 14: Canadian NSERC/CIHR/NCIC OCT Funding by Principal Investigator.  Note that some of these separately listed institutes are actually the same institute.  For example the University Health Network is comprised of the Ontario Cancer Institute and Toronto Western Hospital and both affiliated with the University of Toronto.

What Did The Money Accomplish?

As with all research dollars, it is difficult to determine how effective the investment of taxpayer money has been.  It is clear that OCT has had a major impact in the field of ophthalmology.  OCT was voted as one of the most important advances in ophthalmology over the past 25 years and more importantly, has helped diagnose various eye conditions for millions of people worldwide.  In addition to OCT functioning as a unique, high-resolution, general-purpose ophthalmic diagnostic tool, OCT has played an important role in many other areas of ophthalmology. As an example, intravitreal injection of anti-angiogenesis medications has been a major breakthrough in the treatment of age related macular degeneration in the past 5 years. OCT is the clinical standard for assessing treatment response and the need for re-treatment and the combination has proven to be a major sight-saver.  OCT is also playing major roles in the management of other macular diseases, glaucoma, and corneal disease.  One very important impact of OCT is that it enables non-specialists, such as comprehensive ophthalmologists or optometrists, to detect early disease at a level approaching retinal or glaucoma specialists.  This detection of early disease, at stages where it is still treatable, has had a dramatic impact on patient care.  OCT has imaged ~100M people over the past decade, generated over a billion of dollars in revenue, and created many 1,000’s of man-years of direct jobs (at system and subsystem companies) and probably 10X that number in indirect jobs.  It is clear that the government funding that supported OCT research back in the late 1980s and early 1990s was instrumental in advancing the development of OCT and its application in ophthalmology.  One example, Carl Zeiss Meditec’s highly successful OCT product line can be traced back to a startup company (Advanced Ophthalmic Devices) that was founded and came out of academic sponsored research at MIT.

The NEI NIH budget was approximately $131M over the past decade (See Table 1).  Was that a good investment of taxpayer dollars?  It would seem the answer is unquestionably yes from both a healthcare perspective and a business return-on-investment perspective (over $1B in revenue generated).   Current and future government funding associated with ophthalmology may be equally important to better understand the progression of diseases and to sponsor high-risk technology development for new instrumentation with advanced capabilities for treatment of blinding diseases like glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration.

Cardiology is another clear area where OCT seems destined to have a major impact on the medical device industry and on health care.  Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer in the industrialized world.  Approximately 1M people die in the USA every year from various complications related to cardiovascular disease.  Intravascular OCT may play an important role in identifying and guiding the treatment of coronary artery disease and providing a key diagnostic tool for performing clinical studies on critical technologies for cardiovascular care, such as stents and drugs.  Today, there are three companies with major intravascular OCT product efforts: LightLab Imaging/St. Jude Medical, Volcano Corporation, and Terumo.  Currently Lightlab Imaging/St. Jude Medical has the only FDA approved product. Lightlab received that clearance in 2010 and shortly afterward was acquired by St. Jude Medical for ~$90M.  Already, over 40,000 patients have been imaged with Lightlab clinical instruments.  While none of these companies have received significant direct US Government funding, all three of them can be clearly traced back to government sponsored research in academic institutions.  Lightlab was founded and associated with MIT, the Volcano OCT product was associated with founders at the University of Texas, and Terumo’s OCT effort traces its IP back to research dollars awarded to the Massachusetts General Hospital.  Again, it seems government funding has played a critical role in advancing OCT in cardiology and it is probably equally important for the government continue to sponsor work in this area. As with ophthalmology, the government investment is poised to pay back in large multiples from a business perspective and a job creation perspective and, most importantly, from the perspective of improving healthcare for millions of people. 

OCT is poised to make important scientific contributions in dermatology, pulmonology, otolaryngology, gastroenterology, gynecology, developmental biology, dentistry, as well as non-medical applications.  There are numerous examples of government-sponsored research leading to academic advances related to improved understanding in medicine and better patient care.  While determining the impact of research dollars for the academic institutions is difficult, it is a little easier to make estimates of impact on Government funding that traces its way from academic institutions to for-profit business or funding that is given directly to for-profit business by looking at the impact commercial products (or lack thereof) have or may have on the market place. 

Snap-Shot of For-Profit Companies and Government Grants

A sampling of some of the commercial OCT for-profit companies is listed in Table 9 along with some conjectures of their revenue (small 0-$10M, medium $10M-$100M,  and large $100M+), estimates of their equity financing, and connections to sources of government funding.  Note there are some smaller OCT system companies and many many more subsystem and component companies supplying the OCT market that are not listed in Table 9.  On the commercial side, it is clear that government-sponsored academic research is seeding important, for-profit entities including: Lightlab/MIT, Bioptigen/Duke University, NinePoint Medical/MGH, Diagnostic Photonics/UIUC, Imalux/Institute of Physics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Oncoscope/Duke University, and others.  As shown, the amount of venture investment is well in excess of $125M and the current yearly world-wide OCT capital equipment and disposable market is on the order of $300M and is expected to grown to $1B/year in the not-too-distant future as many of the companies obtain FDA and CE approvals and begin to sell their OCT products (including companies such as Terumo and Volcano which appear to be getting close to FDA approvals for their cardiovascular products).  The R&D investment would be substantially higher than $125M of Venture Capital money listed in Table 9, if R&D investment dollar data for all the companies were shown and even much higher if companies that manufacture OCT components or sub-systems rather than instruments as well as internal R&D dollars were considered.  So far there has been almost $200M in exits for OCT startup companies ($90M Lightlab acquisition by St. Jude Medical, $21M Axsun acquisition by Volcano Corporation, $63M Cardiospectra acquisition by Volcano Corporation, $94M Optopol acquisition by Cannon Medical Systems, $10M Ophthalmic Technologies Incorporated (OTI) acquisition by OPKO Health).  The total OCT instrument and sub-system revenue integrated since the first product became commercial in the mid 1990’s is in excess of $1B.  If only the funding from other government programs such as the controversial recent US stimulus “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” could pay current and on-going dividends like the governments investment in OCT seems to have accomplished!

While grants invested in for-profit companies can still be for fundamental research just as in academic institutions, funding from the US Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) and similar grants are mandated to advance businesses, create jobs, and move products into the market place.  It is interesting to note that the majority of what are now some of biggest OCT companies on the planet (e.g. Carl Zeiss Meditec, Optovue, Lightlab, Volcano, etc.) have received a relatively small amount or no direct government funding at all.  But as noted above, with the exception of Optovue, their OCT products were the offspring of money invested by the US Government into academic institutions.  It is also clear that there are a few examples of repeated government investment in for profit companies that are not leading to positive for-profit results and conversely there are for-profit OCT companies that have not taken any direct government money and are doing extremely well.  Optovue is one such success story.  Optovue is an impressive ophthalmic OCT system company that was founded in December of 2003, raised ~$14M in equity financing, and was the first to commercialize a spectral domain OCT system. It has rapidly grown market share and had ~$50M in revenue in 2010.  The company was equity financed and received no direct or indirect government funding for financing or growth of the company.  Optovue has announced plans to enter the optometry markets with an innovative “pay per use” model and has ambitions to bring OCT CapX costs to a point where it can thrive through the developing world.  According to CEO Jay Wei “It is clear that academia continues to need government funding, but what would best benefit companies like Optovue are tax incentives”.

Bioptigen is another example of a successful OCT startup that spawned out of OCT academic research dollars of co-founder Joseph Izatt at Duke University and Case Western Reserve University (~$10M funding OCT-related research) and grew with the aid of for-profit government funding (~$4M).  According to Bioptigen CEO Eric Buckland, “Grant funds have been invaluable to Bioptigen and allowed us to explore underserved and niche applications, including preclinical research and pediatric ophthalmology that may not have found funding otherwise, but are never-the-less important markets.  The rules for winning the grants are clear and the open competitive nature of the process allows good ideas to get through.  They are particularly valuable as seed financing, particularly in a financial environment where risk capital (e.g. corporate and venture capital) moves up stream to more developed technologies and larger addressable markets. Furthermore, SBIRs are accessible to geographic areas with much less well developed pools of risk capital. The major problem with building a company with SBIRs is it is a very slow process.”  Due to the US government budget battles, SBIRs have been on life support for the past year and without reauthorization, they will expire or substantially change 2011. 

 

In the UK, startup company Michelson Diagnostics has received substantial assistance from the regional and central UK government (~$800k) and Michelson Diagnostics has introduced an impressive OCT product for dermatology and other markets.  The UK government has a program called “Enterprise Investment Scheme” which promotes early stage investment by providing tax relief to angel investors. This program, and others like it, has created an environment in the UK favorable to 'angel' investment in seed-stage and very early stage investments. According to Michelson Diagnostics CEO Jon Holmes, “The Enterprise Investment Scheme has been critical to Michelson in enabling us to raise finance in early years”.  It seems many programs in the UK and EU are required by law to have grants to companies be matched, or more than matched, by privately sourced funding.  Although there are US government grant programs that have matching requirements (e.g. NIST ATP/TIP), some people have suggested that more matching of private capital on for-profit government grants would be a good idea for the US to avoid repeatedly providing for-profit funding to companies that do not transition to real products and profitability, or the US to avoid funding commercial entities for projects that are academic not commercial oriented. 

Dr. Felix Feldchtein, one of the early OCT pioneers at the Institute of Applied Physics at the Russian Academy of Sciences and co-founder of Imalux (along with Alexander Sergeev, Valentin Gelikonov, and Grigory Gelikonov), stated that “early support by the Russian Foundation of Fundamental Research was instrumental for early technology development of OCT in Russia prior to founding Imalux”.  Dr. Feldchtein, a long time resident of the US and serial entrepreneur, has the opinion that much of the US SBIR and equivalent programs are often not sufficiently business oriented.  He stated, “Programs are often judged mainly by academically minded panels focusing on academic merit.  As a result, scientifically innovative proposals with very questionable commercial potential are winning over innovative technologies which are ready for the market but have already lost academic attractiveness.”  This seems to ring true to many as there is no shortage of for-profit companies (within the OCT market and outside the OCT market) that have repeatedly won government SBIR or similar money over the years that are taking advantage of imperfections in the funding system and never produced a successful product.

Optiphase is a private company in the OCT space (and other spaces) primarily doing OEM business and is located in California and was founded in 1990.  Optiphase did not take equity financing in its early years.  Optiphase won several SBIR grants and a NIST TIP grants exceeding $1M that functioned like venture capital funding but without dilution.  Optiphase business is up in 2011 and over the past three years.  Optiphase still reviews the various government solicitations, but is cautious not to pursue ideas that are not aligned with fundamental corporate needs. CEO and founder Jeff Bush cautions “Grants and similar R&D government sponsored funding vehicles are generally hazardous to your bottom line.  However, for startups with little or no external funding, they are the essential ingredients to future livelihood, which I fully condone and encourage.”  Many successful businessmen would agree with the insight of Mr. Bush on being very selective on if and how to chase government funding because it can put companies a risk of running like a government vs being the nimble, efficient, creative, and profit driven entities they need to be to survive in today’s globally competitive markets.

LLTech is startup company with offices in France and the USA.  LLTech is focusing on full-field OCT microscopy system with sub-micron resolution in 3D and recently introduced its Light-CT product for applications in digital pathology and other markets.  The company has raised ~$1M in equity and about $3.2M in direct and indirect grants from the French Government.  Founder and CEO, Bertrand Le Conte de Poly stated that “It is hard to access private capital in France for early stage startups without a proof-of-concept completed.  Access to grants for LLTech directly or access for grants from 3^rd parties that use LLTech equipment have been greatly beneficial for moving our vision of digital pathology forward.  For the future it would be beneficial to reduce the amount of paper work and the long process.”

As mentioned above, it is clear that many OCT system companies have been founded directly by researchers who were funded by government grants at universities.  But there are also very successful examples of companies that were founded and funded independent of OCT, but acquired OCT technology from universities.  This includes Volcano Corporation acquiring intravascular OCT technology from startup Cardiospectra for $63M in 2007,  Cardiospectra was founded out of government sponsored OCT research at the University of Texas at Austin.  In Europe, Cannon Medical Systems acquire Optopol for $94M in 2009.  Optopol was originally a private small company in Poland founded in 1992 and most of the income was from resale of some smaller ophthalmology and dermatology equipment of well known brands (e.g. Topcon, Haaghstreit, etc) as well as some in house production of perimeters and topographers for ophthalmology.  Optopol wanted to create more corporate value and move their position from services to “high-tech production” of an industry leading product.  Optopol happened to have access to a world leading OCT research group also in Poland, the Nicolaus Copernicus University (NCU).  NCU researchers have published leading research papers in OCT in general, and ophthalmology in particular, for many years.  Over the past decade they have received ~$4.2M (~$11M Zloty) of public sponsored research (Polish Government, European Science Foundation, and European Commission).  NCU worked to transfer critical technology “know-how” across a wide range of engineering and manufacturing fronts from NCU into Optopol.  It resulted not only in a $94M acquisition of Optopol from Canon but created important high-tech jobs in Poland.  According to Dr. Maciej Wojtkowski one of the leading researchers at NCU, “For our group at NCU it was more about having an industrial partner, which in the long term could give job opportunities for MSc and PhD students and PhDs from our group.  One of the conditions of our collaboration was creation by Optopol of an R&D office at NCU.”  Many people would agree that this seems an excellent decision on the part of Dr. Wojtkowski and created a wining situation that hopefully will continue to pay dividends for Poland and future NCU alumni.

Of course, other system, subsystem, and component companies listed and not listed in Table 9 may be on their way to bringing important products to the market place or have commercial products now and a bright future.  One example is Praevium Incorporated, which just demonstrated an impressive high-performance OCT swept source based on optically pumped VCSEL technology that will soon be commercialized, was supported in part by NIH and other US government agencies for-profit oriented funding.  Currently there is a dearth of choices for commercially available high performance, low cost, compact swept light sources.  Another example of government dollars transitioning to commercial dollars includes Goodrich/Sensors Unlimited which is turning defense dollars into high-speed NIR camera systems that appear imminently useful for spectral domain OCT imaging.

Summary

There has been, and continues to be, tremendous scientific and commercial progress in the field of OCT technology and its application.  Over the past decade, funding from the US Government has totaled on the order of $500M and, if funding in Europe, Asia, Russia, China, Japan and elsewhere were included, this number would be significantly higher.  Government funding has not only helped spur that progress, it appears that it was instrumental and that the payback to society has been exceptional in terms of advancing clinical care to millions of people, creating new businesses, and jobs.  This Government funding has directly or indirectly assisted in attracting hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and corporate R&D dollars, yielding accumulated revenues to date well over a billion dollars, and directly employed many 1,000’s of man-years of jobs (perhaps over 10,000).

Within the USA and elsewhere there will be increased economic pressure on allocation of Government funding and it is unlikely that that the funding base will grow by 25% per year as it did last year.  The competition for government funding is already fierce and it will be getting harder for institutions and principal investigators to keep the funding levels they currently have.  A significant fraction of the sponsored research that is not high impact will probably get weeded out.  Funding pressure will be especially difficult on weaker, for profit companies that do not transition from red ink to black ink soon.  It is clear from the comments of a sampling of some of the successful CEOs in the OCT space that continued funding is important, but there are ways to improve the funding process.

It would be interesting to compare the funding and impact on other fields outside OCT or medical diagnostic equipment.  Fields such a Nanotechnology are often viewed as over-hyped, make the cover of everyday popular magazines and are in the mind of the public.  In contrast, the field of OCT is not well known to the public and probably not well known at the highest levels of funding agencies.  But OCT has clearly made major fundamental scientific and clinical advances and appears to continue to pay back handsomely in terms of creation of for-profit companies and jobs and is growing mostly due to its widespread utility rather than hype.  The future still looks bright as OCT begins to have major impacts in clinical fields in addition to ophthalmology and gets integrated with other diagnostic imaging modalities and therapeutic procedures.  Although there will be increased pressure on government OCT funding, the use of OCT most likely will continue to grow as it will increasingly be used in many clinical studies in many medical and surgical specialties.  A strong argument could be made to funding agencies around the world that OCT is not a place to cut funding as there is still strong potential for growth and impact and return-on-investment.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Russell Cox at Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council in the UK for assistance retrieving data from the EPSRC databases; Nancy Mendoza at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council in the UK for assistance retrieving data from the BBRSC database; Tiffany Lay at the Medical Research Council for assistance retrieving data from the MRC database and permission to reproduce the data; CORDIS Support Services for assistance on the European Commission CORDIS database; Howard Schlossberg and Yvonne Mason from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for providing funding data on the Medical Free Electron Laser Program; and James Fujimoto at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for reviewing and discussing this market research.  An exchange rate of 1.64$/lb was used to convert UK pounds to dollars, 1.44$/E was used to convert from Euros to dollars, and of $1.025$/Canadian-$ was used.

 

 Table 1: NIH OCT Funding Breakdown by Funding Agency

  

Organization Name	Dollars		Organization Name	Dollars
Total	$336,120,649		UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE	$709,296
MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL	$27,757,173		OCT MEDICAL IMAGING, INC.	$693,204
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA	$24,263,726		KING'S COLLEGE	$614,346
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IRVINE	$18,858,887		UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LAWRENCE	$602,082
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA	$14,449,387		CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL BOSTON	$578,194
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON	$13,420,676		RICE UNIVERSITY	$561,673
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY	$12,587,684		SLOAN-KETTERING INSTITUTE FOR CANCER RES	$539,965
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY	$12,303,945		NATIONAL HEART, LUNG, AND BLOOD INSTITUTE	$508,791
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH	$9,902,622		UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA	$497,955
DUKE UNIVERSITY	$9,306,425		UNIVERSITY HOSPITALS OF CLEVELAND	$481,345
BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL	$9,011,248		RESEARCH TRIANGLE INSTITUTE	$471,378
STARPHARMA, LTD	$8,969,850		WEILL MEDICAL COLLEGE OF CORNELL UNIV	$459,001
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS	$8,273,015		SOUTHEAST TECHINVENTURES, INC.	$454,667
OREGON HEALTH AND SCIENCE UNIVERSITY	$7,588,624		CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY	$423,637
PHYSICAL SCIENCES, INC	$7,501,693		MASSACHUSETTS EYE AND EAR INFIRMARY	$422,339
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI SCHOOL OF MEDICINE	$7,492,033		NEW ENGLAND COLLEGE OF OPTOMETRY	$412,628
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY	$7,029,277		UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR	$407,804
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO	$6,275,021		UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PK	$407,652
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS URBANA-CHAMPAIGN	$6,072,263		STANFORD UNIVERSITY	$405,236
STATE UNIVERSITY NEW YORK STONY BROOK	$5,822,421		RIVERSIDE RESEARCH INSTITUTE	$401,049
TEXAS ENGINEERING EXPERIMENT STATION	$5,822,234		FAIRWAY MEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES, INC.	$374,365
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO	$4,885,118		LOUISIANA STATE UNIV A&M COL	$364,228
INDIANA UNIVERSITY BLOOMINGTON	$4,463,140		ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY	$360,870
EMMES CORPORATION	$4,074,027		PHYSICAL OPTICS CORPORATION	$353,252
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AUSTIN	$3,955,334		OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY	$331,625
BOSTON UNIVERSITY	$3,941,461		CLEMSON UNIVERSITY	$306,064
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON	$3,794,916		SUNY DOWNSTATE MEDICAL CENTER	$306,000
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA	$3,603,696		UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HLTH SCI CTR HOUSTON	$294,983
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES	$3,129,259		MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA	$276,563
LPATH THERAPEUTICS, INC.	$3,000,000		VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT	$264,516
MICRON OPTICS, INC.	$2,843,255		GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY	$253,299
PURDUE UNIVERSITY WEST LAFAYETTE	$2,839,964		UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI CORAL GABLES	$227,994
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS MEDICAL BR GALVESTON	$2,827,788		MISSOURI UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOL	$227,250
WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES	$2,591,089		ARCHER OPTX, INC.	$207,455
UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER	$2,493,918		PTAC, INC.	$199,925
UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON	$2,458,740		UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-COLUMBIA	$196,851
IMALUX CORPORATION	$2,408,998		STI OPTRONICS, INC.	$184,745
SOUTHWEST SCIENCES, INC.	$2,374,639		OCULAR PROTEOMICS, LLC	$177,367
BIOPTIGEN, INC.	$2,314,406		UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA (UGA)	$168,615
UPSTATE MEDICAL UNIVERSITY	$2,161,575		UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-ST. LOUIS	$165,526
CORNELL UNIVERSITY ITHACA	$2,143,277		OPTICAL BIOSPY TECHNOLOGIES, INC. (OBTI)	$154,581
CLEVELAND CLINIC LERNER COL/MED-CWRU	$2,113,152		VISDEX CORPORATION	$153,908
PRAEVIUM RESEARCH, INC.	$2,095,541		LASER DIAGNOSTIC TECHNOLOGIES, INC.	$150,320
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE	$2,075,223		INTELLIGENT FIBER OPTIC SYSTEMS CORP	$149,871
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY	$1,972,398		TISSUETECH, INC.	$131,928
EMANUEL HOSPITAL AND HEALTH CENTER	$1,820,249		PHOTON MIGRATION TECHNOLOGIES CORP	$112,797
MEDICAL COLLEGE OF WISCONSIN	$1,676,764		NATIONAL EYE INSTITUTE	$111,788
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM	$1,650,554		MICROSCALE, INC.	$100,277
EUNICE KENNEDY SHRIVER NICHD	$1,622,521		POLARONYX, INC.	$100,081
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY	$1,546,955		LASERSONIX TECHNOLOGIES, INC.	$100,000
JOSLIN DIABETES CENTER	$1,408,046		MEMSCEPT	$100,000
VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INST AND ST UNIV	$1,382,952		AGILTRON, INC.	$99,982
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY	$1,379,662		LICKENBROCK TECHNOLOGIES, LLC	$99,958
HARVARD UNIVERSITY (MEDICAL SCHOOL)	$1,314,605		INTELLIGENT OPTICAL SYSTEMS, INC.	$99,942
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA	$1,286,650		OPTOSPACE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.	$99,935
BIOTEX, INC.	$1,072,334		TECHEN, INC.	$99,254
NRC--INSTITUTE FOR BIODIAGOSTICS	$1,049,283		GENEX TECHNOLOGIES, INC.	$98,991
SCHEPENS EYE RESEARCH INSTITUTE	$971,796		OPTIPHASE, INC.	$97,972
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS ARLINGTON	$956,235		AZNA CORPORATION	$96,525
TUFTS UNIVERSITY BOSTON	$950,719		AHURA CORPORATION, INC.	$96,514
CARL ZEISS MEDITEC, INC.	$911,756		LUMINIT, LLC	$64,425
BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE	$889,869		HUGO W. MOSER RES INST KENNEDY KRIEGER	$43,460
IRIS AO, INC.	$849,096		GORDON RESEARCH CONFERENCES	$36,000
YALE UNIVERSITY	$825,746		HOWARD UNIVERSITY	$21,373
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO	$821,503		POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY	$20,000
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA TWIN CITIES	$720,619		OPTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA	$10,000

 Table 3: NIH OCT Funding Recipient Organizations.

   

 Table 4: NSF OCT Funding Recipient Organizations.

  

 Table 5: UK EPSRC/BBSRC/MRC OCT Funding Recipient Organizations (MRC funding only since 2005).

  

 Table 6: Canadian NSERC/CIHR/NCIC OCT Funding Recipient Organizations.  For example the University Health Network is comprised of the Ontario Cancer Institute and Toronto Western Hospital and both affiliated with the University of Toronto.

  

Contact PI	$333,278,556	Contact PI		Contact PI
HUANG, DAVID	$15,476,678	MILLER, DONALD T	$1,383,575	HENRICHS, P MARK	$474,365
WANG, LIHONG	$11,912,004	WANG, GE	$1,382,952	GREGO, SONIA	$471,378
VARMA, ROHIT	$11,644,820	RUGONYI, SANDRA	$1,331,475	WHEAT, JOE LEONARD	$470,579
IP, MICHAEL S	$11,543,058	KANE, DANIEL J	$1,328,785	CHARLSON, MARY E	$459,001
TEARNEY, GUILLERMO J.	$10,802,009	EMELIANOV, STANISLAV Y	$1,316,205	BROWN, WILLIAM J	$454,667
BREZINSKI, MARK E	$9,635,563	KINNUNEN, TARU	$1,314,605	SKALA, MELISSA C.	$445,778
WERNER, JOHN S.	$8,273,015	CHEN, WEILIAM	$1,312,414	JOOS, KAREN MARGARET	$426,463
FUJIMOTO, JAMES G	$6,301,162	SONKA, MILAN	$1,286,650	SANDBERG, MICHAEL A	$422,339
BOPPART, STEPHEN A	$6,292,038	YUN, SEOK H	$1,259,603	GWIAZDA, JANE E	$412,628
TROMBERG, BRUCE J	$6,037,443	ESENALIEV, RINAT O.	$1,208,139	CABRERA DEBUC, DELIA	$412,326
BARTON, JENNIFER K.	$5,249,210	TANG, CHA-MIN	$1,205,004	BOWD, CHRISTOPHER	$407,388
IZATT, JOSEPH A	$5,089,952	KIM, KANG	$1,178,356	FELEPPA, ERNEST J.	$401,049
CHU, CONSTANCE R	$4,998,773	BEX, PETER JOHN	$1,174,982	STEIN, JOSHUA D	$397,804
CHEN, ZHONGPING	$4,954,366	DICKINSON, MARY E	$1,171,867	SMITH, SETH A	$396,943
DALE, ANDERS M	$4,769,834	HOOD, DONALD C.	$1,171,702	WOLLSTEIN, GADI	$387,620
DE BOER, JOHANNES F	$4,460,976	GILMORE, GROVER C.	$1,167,687	YANG, CHANGHUEI	$382,530
ROLLINS, ANDREW M.	$4,427,590	SWANSON, WILLIAM H.	$1,154,170	CHO, ZANG-HEE	$376,000
PAULL, JEREMY	$4,216,503	CARROLL, JOSEPH	$1,146,143	BURGOYNE, CLAUDE F	$374,016
NUTTALL, ALFRED L	$4,051,061	MCNICHOLS, ROGER J	$1,125,970	MAHADEVAN-JANSEN, A.	$371,307
DUERK, JEFFREY L.	$3,975,053	EFIMOV, IGOR R	$1,125,635	ROWE, STEVEN MARK	$367,550
CRONIN-GOLOMB, ALICE	$3,941,461	LIN, LIH Y	$1,124,777	GULSEN, GULTEKIN	$365,875
FRIED, DANIEL	$3,880,252	NGUYEN, QUAN DONG	$1,102,972	HAIDEKKER, MARK A	$365,466
VAN VELDHUISEN, PAUL C	$3,784,274	YANG, XINMAI	$1,087,745	FELDMAN, MARTIN	$364,228
PORCIATTI, VITTORIO	$3,692,255	JIAO, SHULIANG	$1,070,394	KANG-MIELER, JENNIFER J	$360,870
KNIGHTON, ROBERT W	$3,495,928	ZHOU, QIENYUAN	$1,062,076	RICHARDS-KORTUM, R.	$360,638
HUXLIN, KRYSTEL R	$3,351,176	CHOO-SMITH, LIN-P'ING	$1,049,283	FREEMAN, DENNIS M.	$355,709
SCHUMAN, JOEL S	$3,188,919	BRENNER, MATTHEW	$1,043,100	RICHDALE, KATHRYN	$331,625
GILLIES, ROBERT J.	$3,139,012	BERNSTEIN, STEVEN L	$1,034,119	GMITRO, ARTHUR F	$329,510
SABBADINI, ROGER ALLEN	$3,000,000	FERGUSON, R DANIEL	$1,005,210	YANOVITCH, TAMMY LYN	$326,592
ZANGWILL, LINDA M	$2,883,264	DU, CONGWU	$999,833	SRINIVASAN, MANDAYAM	$316,366
HSU, KEVIN	$2,843,255	BURNS, STEPHEN A.	$915,360	WAX, ADAM	$307,897
WEI, ALEXANDER	$2,839,964	ALTAWEEL, MICHAEL M	$894,908	JIANG, HUABEI	$306,064
NELSON, JOHN STUART	$2,775,805	KANG, JIN U	$882,721	BARBOUR, RANDALL L.	$306,000
BOAS, DAVID A	$2,758,372	HELMBRECHT, MICHAEL A	$849,096	HAMM-ALVAREZ, SARAH	$303,750
MCCARTHY, THOMAS D	$2,681,623	NATH, RAVINDER	$831,778	CURCIO, CHRISTINE A	$293,000
HAMMER, DANIEL X	$2,672,047	SHAHIDI, MAHNAZ	$821,503	CULVER, JOSEPH P	$292,302
CARR, JOHN JEFFREY	$2,591,089	WANG, RUIKANG	$818,282	KIMMEY, MICHAEL B	$283,825
AMAZEEN, PAUL G.	$2,408,998	APPLEGATE, BRIAN E.	$815,433	ABLONCZY, ZSOLT	$276,563
TABER, LARRY A	$2,366,459	GEORGE, STEVEN CARL	$802,812	PITTLER, STEVEN J	$274,940
RYLANDER, HENRY GRADY	$2,343,341	GLUCKSBERG, MATTHEW	$782,224	MILNER, THOMAS E.	$267,650
IFTIMIA, NICUSOR	$2,203,087	XIA, YOUNAN	$777,839	BELLAMKONDA, RAVI V	$253,299
HYMAN, LESLIE G.	$2,145,862	BACKMAN, VADIM	$764,731	CSAKY, KARL G.	$252,661
WISE, FRANK W	$2,143,277	DEMIREL, SHABAN	$761,175	FRIED, DANIEL	$245,584
LI, XINGDE	$2,127,485	OTIS, LINDA L.	$746,149	CIDECIYAN, ARTUR V	$230,863
JAYARAMAN, VIJAY	$2,095,541	AKKIN, TANER	$720,619	AWDEH, RICHARD M	$229,500
BALCER, LAURA	$2,088,213	YAO, XINCHENG	$715,064	WILSON, DAVID L	$228,866
KIMURA, WAYNE D.	$2,044,826	HUNTER, BOYD VERN	$709,779	WANG, JIANHUA	$228,001
HARWERTH, RONALD S	$1,988,161	RAMALINGAM, T.	$693,204	WANG, MICHAEL R	$227,994
BUCKLAND, ERIC L.	$1,962,334	FORTUNE, BRAD	$685,058	XIAO, HAI	$227,250
SMITH, ROLAND T.	$1,957,557	BESHARSE, JOSEPH C	$680,120	MUJAT, MIRCEA	$216,383
WONG, BRIAN	$1,848,089	JO, JAVIER ANTONIO	$667,758	HSIEH, ADAM H	$208,262
JAFFE, GLENN	$1,816,380	ROMANOWSKI, MAREK J	$653,010	TKACZYK, TOMASZ S	$208,035
DAVE, DIGANT P	$1,752,787	LAVAIL, MATTHEW M	$634,272	SHNITSER, PAUL	$207,838
PARK, BORIS HYLE	$1,691,599	NAISMITH, ROBERT T	$616,634	TANG, SHAO-JUN	$202,988
BARTSCH, DIRK-UWE G	$1,662,365	PERTSOV, ARKADY M	$589,439	KUO, ANTHONY NANLIN	$201,428
PAN, YINGTIAN	$1,638,964	FULTON, ANNE B	$578,194	SAYERAM, SUNITA	$201,230
MOTAMEDI, MASSOUD	$1,636,895	GRUNWALD, JUAN E	$575,121	TROFIMOV, IGOR E	$199,925
HASAN, TAYYABA	$1,622,528	VANNASDALE, DEAN A.	$565,307	CHEN, YU	$199,390
GANDJBAKHCHE, AMIR H	$1,622,521	STETTEN, GEORGE D.	$546,797	MARTIN, DANIEL F	$182,031
BARLOW, ROBERT B	$1,572,136	HRICAK, HEDVIG	$539,965	MANDELLA, MICHAEL J	$181,072
HUANG, XIANGRUN	$1,537,440	MCLELLAN, GILLIAN JANE	$524,200	SRINIVASAN, VIVEK JAY	$180,000
ROCKMAN, HOWARD A	$1,524,820	THOMPSON, DARBY	$517,760	GLASER, BERT	$177,367
PETERSON, KRISTEN A	$1,523,134	KNUTSON, JAY R	$508,791	LI, GUOQIANG	$165,526
SIVAK, MICHAEL V	$1,460,542	WOLF, MATTHEW J	$504,900	FRASER, SCOTT E	$153,908
FERRANTE, ANTHONY A	$1,411,636	LEWIN, ALFRED S	$497,955	REZAI, ALI R	$153,000
FEENER, EDWARD P	$1,408,046	ELSNER, ANN E	$493,435	HU, ZHILIN	$151,000
BOUMA, BRETT E	$1,394,930	BLODI, BARBARA A	$477,134	BOWER, BRADLEY A.	$150,842

 Table 7: NIH OCT Funding Principal Investigators.

 

 Table 8: NSF OCT Funding Principal Investigators.

 

Table 9: UK EPSRC/BBRSC/MRC OCT Funding Principal Investigators (MRC funding only since 2005).

 

Table 10: Canadian NSERC/CIHR/NCIC OCT Funding Principal Investigators.

  

Company	Field	Status	Estimated Yearly OCT Revenue	OCT Equity Finance	Connection to Government OCT Funding
Avinger	Cardiology	Startup	0	~$25M	?
Axsun Technologies	OCT Systems	Acquired by Volcano	Medium	0	Axsun's OCT effort is believed to be mainly internally funding from revenue and VC money from other markets.  Axsun was acquired by Volcano Corporation for $21M.
Bioptigen	Ophthalmology	Startup	Small	~$4M	Co-founded by Dr. Joseph Izatt at Duke University.  Also Bioptigen raised direct government funds of  ~$4M
Carl Zeiss Medtech	Ophthalmology	Established Company	Large	N/A	Zeiss Acquired Advanced Ophthalmic Devices in 1994 that was founded by Dr. James Fujimoto, Dr. Carmen Pulifiato, and Mr. Eric Swanson at MIT, NEEI, and Tufts Medical.  AOD received no direct government funding nor did Zeiss for many years.
Cannon / Optopol Technology	Ophthalmology	Established Company	Medium	?	Optopol had connections to leading researchers at Nicolaus Copernicus University which had received ~$4M of government funding over past 10 years. Cannon medical acquired Optopol for $94M in 2010.
D4D Technologies	Dentistry	Established Company	0	?	?
Diagnostic Photonics Incorporated	Oncology	Startup	0	~$1.7M	Co-founded by Dr. Stephen Boppart and Dr. Scott Carney at University of Illionis at Urbana Champaign.
Hagg-Streit	Ophthalmology	Established Company	Small	N/A	?
Heidelberg Engineering	Ophthalmology	Established Company	Medium	N/A	?
Heliotis AG	Microscopy	Established Company	Small	?	Heliotis was a spin-off of CSEM a government sponsored research institution in Switzerland.
Imalux	Oncology, guiding biopsy and surgery	Startup	Small	~$7M	Imalux was co-founded by Dr. Felix Feldchtein Alexander Sergeev, Valentin Gelikonov, and Grigory Gelikonov from the Institute of Applied Physics at the Russian Academy of Sciences.  Imalux received about $2.5M of direct government funding from NIH and other funding from the Edison Biotechnology Fund.
Lantis Laser	Dentistry	Startup	0	~$2.5M	Licensed IP from MIT, Lawerence Livermore, and others universities of OCT work supported by Government funding.
Lightlab Imaging / St. Jude Medical	Cardiology	Established Company	Medium	~$10M	Founded by Dr. James Fujimoto, Dr. Mark Brezinski, and Mr. Eric Swanson at MIT.  Lightlab received a NIST ATP grant in 1998 for $2.6M but not much other government funding for many years.  Lightlab was acquired by St. Jude medical for ~$90 M in 2010 just after receiving FDA clearance  of its FD-OCT product.
LL Tech	Digital Pathology	Startup	Small	~$0.6M	LL Tech was Co-Founded by Dr. Claude Boccara Laboratory at CNRS in France which receives Government funding.  In addition LL Tech has received about $3.2M in direct and indirect government funding.
Michelson Diagnostics	Dermatology	Startup	Small	~$7.5M	The UK government has been very supportive to Michelson Diagnostics supplying over several years ~$800k.  Also licensed OCT Patents from University of Toronto.
MicroTomography Inc.	Ophthalmology	Established Company	Small	?	?
Newton Photonics	Glucose Sensing	Startup	0	?	Newton Photonics received SBIR grant for $480k.
Nexus Imaging Systems	Endoscopy	Startup	0	?	?
Nidek	Ophthalmology	Established Company	Medium	N/A	?
Nikon Instruments	Ophthalmology	Established Company	Small	N/A	?
NinePoint Medical	Endoscopy	Startup	0	~$33M	NinePoint Medical Licensed numerous patents and other IP and receives assistance from the MGH research group of Dr. Brett Bouma, Dr. Gary Tearney, and others.
NovaCam Technologies	Microscopy	Startup	Small	?	NovaCam works closely with National Research Council Canada.
OCT Medical Imaging Inc	Oncology	Startup	0	?	Co-Founded by Dr. Zhongping Chen from UC Irvine.  Company has also received direct government funding ~$1M
Oncoscope	Oncology	Startup	0	~$3.5M	Oncoscope was founded by Dr. Adam Wax out of Duke University.
OptiMedica	Ophthalmology	Startup	Medium	N/A	?
OptiPhase	OCT Systems	Established Company	Small	0	Optiphase won a $1.1M NIST TIP Award in 2008 and a few other SBIR’s but most were not related to OCT
Optovue	Ophthalmology	Established Company	Medium	~$14M	Optovue progress in the OCT market was purely with equity  funding but Optovue did and does participate in Government sponsored clinical trials of its product.  Optovue did ~$50M in revenue in 2010
OPKO / OTI	Ophthalmology	Established Company	Medium	?	OPKO acquired OTI for $10M in 2007.
Physical Sciences Incorporated	R&D Contractor	Established Company	N/A	?	Physical Sciences has received ~$7.5M in Government OCT funding
P&P Optica	High Performance Spectroscopy	Startup	Small	<$500k	P&P Optical has no direct government funding for OCT research, but does support several university projects via in-kind and cash matching contributions.
Santec	OCT Systems	Established Company	Medium	?	?
Shenzhen Moptium Imaging Co	OCT Systems	Startup	Small	?	?
Solianis Monitoring AG	Glucose Sensing	Startup	Small	?	?
Terumo Cardiovascular Systems	Cardiology	Established Company	Not yet FDA cleared	N/A	Terumo licensed numerous patents and other IP and receives assistance from the MGH research group of Dr. Brett Bouma, Dr. Gary Tearney, and others.
Thorlabs	OCT Systems	Established Company	Medium	N/A	While Thorlabs collaborates with numerous universities the majority of Thorlabs OCT effort is believed to be internal funded.
Tomey	Ophthalmology	Established Company	Small	?	?
Tomophase Corporation	Pulmonology	Startup	Small	~$5M	?
Topcon Medical Systems	Ophthalmology	Established Company	Medium	N/A	?
Tornado Medical Systems	Oncology	Startup	0	~$7M	Won Substantial Canadian Provincial Government Grant.
Volcano Corporation	Cardiology	Startup	Not yet FDA cleared	N/A	Volcano Acquired Cardiospectra for $63M for its start in OCT.  Cardiospectra was founded by Dr. Marc Feldman and Dr. Thomas Miller from University of Texas at Austin.
TOTAL			~$300M+	~$125M+

 Table 11: Listing of Some OCT System and Subsystem Companies.