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 ...

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 ...