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 ...

Photo-fragmentation Venture-backed French startup company Keranova says that its femtosecond laser system will “revolutionize” the field of cataract operations, by providing surgeons with a single tool that can be used for the entire procedure. The St. Etienne firm says that it has found a way to improve on the current generation of ultrafast laser equipment, which is unable to complete the crucial lens photo-fragmentation step quickly enough. Surgical disappointment Presenting the company’s technology during an industry session at this week’s SPIE Photonics Europe event in Strasbourg, Keranova’s scientific director Aurélien Bernard explained that despite the introduction ...

CareWear and Orbis take second and third in new-product pitch contest at SPIE Photonics West. Startup winners: 3,2,1: Orbis's Simpson; Clearview's Castel; and PhotoniCare's Shelton. PhotoniCare , a spinout of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), which has developed a handheld, low-cost imaging platform for medical applications such as inspecting the eardrum, was named the winner of the 2018 SPIE Startup Challenge, last week during Photonics West in San Francisco. The ClearViewT, the first product on the Photonicare platform is described as “being able to fundamentally change the way physicians manage middle ear infections, one ...

A heart attack, or myocardial infarction (MI), can cause considerable damage to the tissues of the heart, and a better understanding of that damage would be a valuable step towards improved treatment and therapy after the attack. Researchers at the University of Houston have developed a technique based on optical coherence elastography (OCE) that could be used for biomechanical characterization of MI, and be a useful tool to study heart repair. The work was published in Biomedical Optics Express . "About one million people suffer heart attacks every year, and there is currently no cure for the resulting cardiac tissue scarring ...

Optical coherence tomography has become a standard technique in ophthalmology, thanks to its easy fit with clinical workflows and the ability to image particular zones of the eye, such as the anterior chamber and the cornea. Use of the same technique to image the whole eye has proved challenging. OCT's limited imaging depth can be improved though Fourier domain methods and use of modern swept-source laser sources, but the optics of the eye prevent the focusing of light on both the anterior chamber and the retina simultaneously without sacrificing resolution. A project from Poland's Nicolaus Copernicus University and ...

Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has backed a project to explore the potential of optical coherence tomography (OCT) to improve remote laser welding in car production. Funded under the country’s “Photonics Research Germany” program, the effort includes representatives from auto giant BMW, who will work alongside laser welding and OCT experts at Precitec, Blackbird Robotersysteme, Emil Bucher, and the Technical University of Munich. The project utilizes a Blackbird scanner comprising an “intelliWELD” PR scan head provided by Scanlab , a control unit, and an integrated OCT scanner. The team adds that imaging relies on ultra-fast workpiece ...

LioniX International (LXI) and Academic Medical Center (AMC) of the University of Amsterdam are collaborating on the development of Photonic Integrated Circuit-based Optical Coherence Tomography modules. The partners say that the implementation of PIC-based technologies in OCT modules will enable miniaturized handheld OCT modules and so broaden the scope and application of OCT-based systems. AMC and LXI have signed a collaboration agreement to accelerate the development of PIC-based OCT modules with a clear link to the clinical testing, which they say is essential for successful market introduction for these modules. Furthermore, both parties are participating in an EU funded Eurostars ...

Sales into G&H’s other target market sector – life sciences – have risen at a slower rate, but at £9.6 million were still up nearly 10 per cent on the prior year. Key applications here include optical coherence tomography (OCT), laser surgery and microscopy, with Webster writing: “Despite the increase in revenue the [life sciences] profit did decline year on year, which is primarily due to the investments made into future capabilities. Though life sciences is a relatively small sector for G&H, we see this as a strategically important one going forward.

New instrument from Horizon 2020 project will use OCT and MPT for high-resolution imaging. Piccolo project: the European consortium A project funded under the EU Horizon 2020 program aims to develop a novel endoscope for the identification and diagnosis of colorectal cancer, the latest step in the use of optical technologies to tackle one of the world's predominant cancers. Running for three years until December 2019, and involving nine European industrial and research partners led by Spain's Tecnalia Research & Innovation research center, the Piccolo project envisages an advanced endoscope instrument able to deliver high-resolution structural and functional imaging ...

The Institute of Biological and Medical Imaging at Helmholtz Zentrum München , Germany, is heading a research project entitled ”Hybrid optical and optoacoustic endoscope for esophageal tracking” or ESOTRAC . This four-year, €4 million, pan-European project will bring together engineers and physicians to develop a novel hybrid endoscopic instrument for early diagnosis and staging of esophageal cancer. The finished device is expected to reduce the number of unnecessary biopsies and, importantly, facilitate early-disease detection leading to earlier start of therapy, which will improve therapeutic efficacy over late-disease treatment and, ultimately, cost-savings for health care systems. ESOTRAC was awarded the €4 million ...

The BiOS Expo, part of SPIE's Photonics West event taking place this week in San Francisco, witnessed the unveiling of a new low-cost optical coherence tomography (OCT) scanner that developer Lumedica believes could dramatically extend the impact of the imaging technology for eye health. Founded in Durham, North Carolina, by an experienced team of engineers including chief scientist Adam Wax from Duke University, Lumedica’s debut scanner is priced at $10,000 – in a sector where entry-level equipment typically costs at least $35,000. Bottom-up design Wax explains that the low cost is achieved by using optical components already ...

Employer Description BEST in OPHTHALMOLOGY in the USA U.S. News & World Report has once again ranked Bascom Palmer as the Best in Ophthalmology for 2015-2016 . This is the 12th consecutive year we have received the #1 ranking in the annual Best Hospitals survey. Bascom Palmer has received the #1 ranking a remarkable fourteen times (1994, 1998, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016). Bascom Palmer’s Research Mission The future of ophthalmology lies in the creation of new knowledge and technology and its rapid translation into the clinic to help patients. Our ...

MIT project achieves 3D OCT over cubic-meter volumes. OCT on a bicycle: imaging cubic-meter volumes The value of optical coherence tomography (OCT) as a technique for micrometer-resolution sub-surface imaging is well established, with new applications now being added to its existing success in ophthalmology and medicine. Its imaging range has usually been restricted to a few centimeters, however, inevitably placing a limit on some of the potential uses for it that developers can envisage. A project group under OCT-pioneer James Fujimoto at MIT , and including industrial participants Thorlabs , has now drastically boosted that limit, and demonstrated 3D imaging over cubic-meter ...

Multiple UK and Danish partners involved in €4M effort to develop high-res system based around supercontinuum source . Glaucoma: high-res imaging needed for diagnosis Gooch & Housego and NKT Photonics are among eight partners from the UK and Denmark who have just started work on a new €4 million European project to develop a high-resolution optical coherence tomography (OCT) system for glaucoma diagnosis. The “GALAHAD” (short for Glaucoma - Advanced, Label-free High Resolution Automated OCT Diagnosis) effort, funded through the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 innovation platform, officially kicked off this month and runs for three years. High-res requirements Current OCT systems offer ...

Advances in silicon photonics development for datacom applications are set to be applied in biophotonics, with a new €4.9 million European project aiming to create a tiny and low-cost system for optical coherence tomography (OCT). While OCT has become widely used for ophthalmic diagnosis and is gaining traction in cardiovascular imaging, the technique still relies on relatively expensive and bulky combinations of laser, optical and electronic equipment. Now a team led by Wolfgang Drexler from the Medical University of Vienna is aiming to shrink the core technology to no more than the size of a coin, primarily to diagnose ...

OCT angiography moves beyond ophthalmic applications 10 May 2016 Wasatch Photonics platform brings the technique to a broader range of bioimaging uses. OCT angiography: structural and blood flow information. A new imaging platform launched by Wasatch Photonics aims to widen the range of applications for high-resolution optical coherence tomography angiography, and enhance the versatility of the technique for both researchers and OEM manufacturers. OCT angiography has already made inroads into clinical ophthalmology, where its non-invasive ability to provide both structural and blood-flow information via functional OCT without the need for fluorescent markers offers an attractive way to map retinal and ...

Researchers in New York have shown that a variation of optical coherence tomography (OCT) is able to tell melanomas apart from other skin lesions, by imaging the patterns of blood vessels that surround them. The small, early-stage study suggests that speckle-variance (sv) OCT could become a useful clinical tool for quickly identifying the most dangerous form of skin cancer, although a larger clinical trial of the technique will be needed to prove its utility first. Writing in the open access journal Dermatology Online , Orit Markowitz and colleagues looked at two pairs of malignant and benign lesions that are typically difficult ...

PIX4LIFE: (bio)photonic integrated circuits Introducing the “PIX4LIFE” effort at the same Brussels meeting, project co-ordinator Wolfgang Eberle from the IMEC electronics development institute in nearby Leuven said the focus would be on health and life science applications. PIX4LIFE will provide open access to CMOS-compatible silicon nitride (SiN) photonic integrated circuit (PIC) production technology, with a specific focus on biophotonics techniques including optical coherence tomography (OCT) and cytometry. Initial open access production runs are scheduled to begin before the end of 2017, but Eberle emphasized that ideas were already being sought. The €8.5 million project aims to showcase PIC-based ...

A research effort involving Laser Zentrum Hannover (LZH) in Germany is developing a new, laser-based treatment for presbyopia – the condition that impacts near vision in people from around the age of 40 onwards. At the moment presbyopia – caused by the age-related stiffening of the lens in those affected – is usually treated with simple solutions like reading or bifocal glasses, with multi-focal contact lenses from the likes of Bausch + Lomb becoming available more recently. Some laser procedures have also been developed, but if successful the LZH-led project could lead to a "gentle" new femtosecond laser technique that makes tiny cuts in ...

Carl Zeiss Meditec , the healthcare equipment division of the German optics giant Zeiss, has smashed its annual revenue target after posting sales in excess of €1 billion for the first time. At €1.04 billion, the publicly listed company’s revenues for the year ending September 30 were up 14 per cent on the previous 12 months . And although the weak euro currency accounts for nearly half of that growth rate, the result still saw the company’s stock price rise close to a 15-year high on the Frankfurt exchange. Leading the charge was Meditec’s surgical ophthalmology division, where ...