Microendoscopes using fiber optics are becoming increasingly important imaging tools, but they have physical limitations. They are essential for applications that require a long working distance, high resolution, and a minimum probe diameter. A paper in IEEE Photonics Journal by Karol Karnowski of Poland’s International Centre for Translational Eye Research , Gavrielle Untracht of Technical University of Denmark , Michael Hackmann of University of Western Australia , Onur Cetinkaya of ICTER and David Sampson of the University of Surrey, UK, sheds new light on modern microendoscopes. The researchers show that endoscopic imaging probes, particularly those for so-called side viewing, combining fiber-optic (GRIN ...

Founded in 1989, Thorlabs seeks to accelerate the forward movement of scientific discovery and advancement! As a vertically integrated manufacturer of photonics components, instruments, and systems, our vast product portfolio includes over 20,000 items, ranging from optics and optomechanical positioning components to imaging systems, many of which are customer inspired. Photonics is the foremost technology driving innovation in science and engineering. As the number of technological innovations has grown, Thorlabs has extended its core competencies in an effort to play an ever increasing role serving the Photonics Industry at the research end, as well as the industrial, life science ...

Founded in 1989, Thorlabs seeks to accelerate the forward movement of scientific discovery and advancement! As a vertically integrated manufacturer of photonics components, instruments, and systems, our vast product portfolio includes over 20,000 items, ranging from optics and optomechanical positioning components to imaging systems, many of which are customer inspired. Photonics is the foremost technology driving innovation in science and engineering. As the number of technological innovations has grown, Thorlabs has extended its core competencies in an effort to play an ever increasing role serving the Photonics Industry at the research end, as well as the industrial, life science ...

A clinical study published in The Lancet Oncology has evaluated the potential value of OCT technology in the treatment and care of basal cell carcinomas (BCC). The trial compared OCT-guided diagnosis of skin lesions with the standard punch biopsies in which small tissue samples are removed using a circular surgical instrument. The VivoSight OCT platform from Michelson Diagnostics was employed in the study, which involved 598 enrolled participants in the Netherlands. VivoSight is a multi-beam OCT platform employing light beams focused at different depths, designed to provide clinicians with continuous images of the epidermis and superficial dermis of the skin ...

Optics is playing a key role in nearly every modern diagnostic advance, and devices that rely on optics are extensively used for medical research, diagnostics and treatment. Shanghai Optics is proud to manufacture high quality optics for medical devices and applications, and we are able to work with your team to design and produce custom medical device optics to fit your specific needs. Our optics are used in medical and clinical research laboratories worldwide, in medical diagnostic applications (including micro endoscopy, optical coherence tomography (OCT), and PCR instruments), and medical treatment applications such as robotic surgery, and laser based ophthalmology ...

A team from the sister companies Blackbird Robotersysteme GmbH and SCANLAB GmbH submitted a joint solution for the Innovation Award Laser Technology 2022. On May 4, the project team was awarded third place for its innovative scan solution with integrated OCT process monitoring. The system primarily impresses due to its flexibility and high practical suitability for the automotive sector. The ability to synchronize scanner and sensor data developed in-house also enables use in other application areas such as additive manufacturing. The renowned prize is awarded by the associations AKL Arbeitskreis Lasertechnik e.V. and the ELI (European Laser Institute) at ...

Multimodal platform should allow cellular-level colon imaging in real-time. Improving diagnosis: PROSCOPE A project funded by the EU's Horizon 2020 program is on course to develop a new imaging system for the diagnosis of bowel cancer. PROSCOPE , officially titled "Point-of-care instrument for diagnosis and image-guided intervention of colorectal cancer," was launched in 2020 and backed by €6 million of EU funding. The project has now carried out an 18-month formal review, confirming that its research program is on target to help reduce the 160,000 deaths and €9 billion in healthcare costs associated with the disease. "Currently, only 14 ...

Jennifer Kehlet Barton , the Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, professor of optical sciences, and director of the BIO5 Institute at the University of Arizona, has been elected to serve as the 2022 Vice President of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. With her election, Barton joins the SPIE presidential chain, and will serve as President-Elect in 2023 and as the Society's President in 2024. SPIE 2021 President David Andrews, a professor at the University of East Anglia, made the announcement along with other SPIE election results at this year's Annual General Meeting of ...

MY COMPANY | CONTACT US daily coverage of the optics & photonics industry and the markets that it serves HOME NEWS NOTICES PRODUCTS BUYERS GUIDE JOBS EMPLOYERS EVENTS PUBLICATIONS ADVERTISE PREVIOUS NEXT TABLE OF CONTENTS Applications Hyperspectral imaging assists early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease 26 May 2021 Imec clinical study identifies signs of plaque accumulation in the retina. Symptoms spotted: retinal imaging Diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) as early as possible in the progress of the condition continues to present a major global health challenge. One potential bioimaging approach has been to look at the cells of a patient's ...

A partnership of Tampa General Hospital (TGH) and University of South Florida’s Health Interventional Cardiology Group have adopted a new intravascular imaging technology and performed the first such procedure in the world. The new intravascular technology, called High Frequency Optical Coherence Tomography (HF-OCT), was recently performed on a patient with critical coronary artery disease, which the partners say, “was the first such successfully treated in the world.” Tampa General has been an early adopter of intravascular imaging for coronary intervention and continues to seek the newest and best technology. The team has incorporated intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and intravascular optical ...

Optical coherence tomography is a real success story in biomedical optics technology, a true bench-to-bedside path." So commented Michael Kaschke, former Chairman of Zeiss for a decade and as of November 2019 Chairman of the KIT Supervisory Board , when he addressed the SPIE Photonics West Digital Forum on the topic of OCT's past success and likely future applications. "At the World Ophthalmology Congress in 2009 I was asked what technologies I believed would play a key role in the following decade," said Kaschke. "I said that ubiquitous use of OCT was one, along with multifocal lenses, femtosecond lasers in ...

Visualizing tissues and neurons inside an animal's skull has long been a challenge for biophotonics techniques, thanks to the skull's thickness and the complex structures inside. Approaches to this problem have included the use of endoscopic platforms in brain imaging, two-photon and three-photon microscopy of small animals, and for surgical purposes the creation of a transparent window in the skull itself. A team at the Institute for Basic Science ( IBS ) in Daejeon, South Korea, has now developed a new approach to tackling the optical aberrations involved in imaging through an intact skull, and tested the system on a ...

Projects from Boston and Portland could help translation of OCTA into clinics. Retina blood flow: vital for diagnosis Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is a promising technique for imaging of blood vessels, in which sequential OCT scans of the same tissue cross-section reveal the sites of blood flow within those tissues, and can allow the blood oxygen content to be calculated. Examination of the retina is one promising application area for OCTA, thanks partly to the widespread adoption of conventional OCT within ophthalmology and its established place in clinical workflows. Two recent projects have published findings that could assist the ...

Projects from Boston and Portland could help translation of OCTA into clinics. Retina blood flow: vital for diagnosis Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is a promising technique for imaging of blood vessels, in which sequential OCT scans of the same tissue cross-section reveal the sites of blood flow within those tissues, and can allow the blood oxygen content to be calculated. Examination of the retina is one promising application area for OCTA, thanks partly to the widespread adoption of conventional OCT within ophthalmology and its established place in clinical workflows. Two recent projects have published findings that could assist the ...

Several diseases of the cornea, such as corneal dystrophy and keratoconus, lead to underlying changes in a cornea's intrinsic biomechanical properties as well as the inherent cellular damage. Measuring those biomechanical markers could be a valuable tool for monitoring and detecting the diseases, especially if the technique can be a non-contact method. Non-invasive measurement methods are inherently likely to be best suited for eventual translation into clinics, and for reducing patient discomfort. Optical coherence elastography (OCE), in which optical coherence tomography is used to image tissue while it is under some form of transient local mechanical deformation and subsequent ...

Virtual conference hears that new applications and markets will likely eclipse current use of the technology in communications. PICs for life sciences Silicon photonics has “endless potential” in applications beyond its current use in telecoms and datacoms, and is likely to create major new markets as the technology migrates to different wavelength regimes. That was one of the key messages from Ghent University professor Roel Baets, in a conference presentation for this week’s SPIE Photonics Europe Digital Forum . The virtual conference is taking place this week, as a replacement for the original event planned for Strasbourg, and features more ...

EU-funded research aims to improve retinal imaging for early screening of glaucoma. Galahad in use Galahad , a Horizon 2020 research project developing an OCT platform for improved early screening of glaucoma, has successfully completed its work, according to project coordinators Gooch & Housego ( G&H ). Launched in 2016 , Galahad - from Glaucoma Advanced, LAbel-free High resolution Automated OCT Diagnostics - has now reached the end of its three-year €4-million program to develop ultra-high resolution polarization-sensitive optical coherence tomography (UHR-PS-OCT). Ten European partners made up the consortium. "Over the last 36 months the project has had a major impact on the development of UHR-PS-OCT ...

The 2020 award will support research into optical coherence elastography and its translation into clinics. Fernando Zvietcovich, Fellowship recipient The 2020 SPIE-Franz Hillenkamp Postdoctoral Fellowship will be awarded to Fernando Zvietcovich, currently a PhD candidate at the University of Rochester , who will receive the Fellowship's $75,000 prize. This annual award is intended to support interdisciplinary research in the biophotonics sector, and provide opportunities for translating new technologies into clinical practice. Zvietcovich will receive recognition during the BIOS Hot Topics session at SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco on 1st February 2020. Zvietcovich's research, conducted in conjunction with ...

Lumedica's low-cost OCT system Lumedica , the startup company spun out of co-founder Adam Wax’s Duke University research group, has won a $1 million small business innovation research (SBIR) grant to further develop its low-cost optical coherence tomography (OCT) platform. The Phase II funding, supported by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Eye Institute (NEI), is intended to help the company deliver a system for point-of-care diagnosis of debilitating retinal diseases. Meanwhile, Wax and colleagues have just published results from the first clinical study using Lumedica equipment for retinal iamging, with results suggesting strong potential for ...

Fife, Scotland-based Optos specializes in ultra-widefield retinal imaging for ophthalmology applications, including optical coherence tomography (OCT) equipment. Winning a Queen’s Award for the third time, on this occasion for innovation, Optos has now sold more than 16,000 imaging systems worldwide. This year’s award was specifically for the company’s “California” retinal imager, which is used to help manage conditions including age-related macular degeneration (AMD) – the world’s leading cause of blindness. “Optos is the only company in the world that provides ultra-widefield imaging technology, which gives a 200° view of the retina in a single capture,” claims ...

iversified optoelectronics company Excelitas has signed a deal to acquire Axsun Technologies from its current owner Anzu Partners. According to the companies involved, the transaction is expected to close in early 2019. No details about the agreement have been disclosed, but Axsun’s CEO Jonathan Hartmann said: “This is an outstanding opportunity for Axsun, our customers, and our employees as we continue to expand our product line and develop new markets together with Excelitas.” Massachusetts-based Axsun, which is best known for its swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT) laser engines, became part of Anzu just over three years ago , after its ...

A clinical study of malignant melanoma suggests that optical imaging of the most aggressive form of skin cancer could yield a faster assessment of particularly dangerous tumors. According to the UK-based optical coherence tomography (OCT) hardware developer Michelson Diagnostics , whose equipment was used in the study by four European dermatology research groups, the technique could offer a “short-cut” to identifying advanced cancers that have begun to spread. That might provide patients with a more aggressive or advanced tumor access to appropriate treatment more quickly, while those with less virulent melanomas could be spared invasive and expensive sentinel lymph-node biopsies that ...

Hamamatsu Photonics has developed a supercontinuum light source, also known the SC light source, that produces higher brightness – approximately 1000 times higher than the company’s own range of xenon lamps. At the same time, the SC source maintains the high stability equivalent to that of xenon lamps by optimizing output conditions and also using a high nonlinear optical fiber as its nonlinear optical material. This source is targeting the market for measuring the complex structure of semiconductor optical measurements. The company added that its official commercial release will be in the spring of 2019. The new SC light source ...

London-listed optics company Gooch & Housego (G&H) has completed another significant acquisition as part of its diversification strategy – this time with a deal to buy US-based Gould Fiber Optics (GFO). Worth up to $16.4 million, the agreement should enhance G&H’s position in the aerospace and defense sectors, particularly in regard to the important US market. Military focus Founded in 1978 and headquartered in Baltimore, GFO specializes in the design, development and manufacture of fiber-optic components and subsystems, and is said to provide key components to some top-ranking US aerospace and defense customers. “The GFO product range is ...