It is estimated that in 2015, 217 million people had moderate to severe vision impairment, while 36 million were blind, according to an article in the journal The Lancet Global Health. The World Health Organization predicts that about 80 % of vision impairment globally is preventable or curable. Early diagnosis is crucial for effective interventions.

Researchers in Sweden have developed cheaper, lighter and more efficient lidar technology that could pave the way for smaller autonomous craft such as drones and robots, and help enable better profitability in the vehicle industry. For autonomous vehicles, lidar is an essential technology to recognize and detect surrounding objects. A team at KTH Royal Institute of Technology has taken aim at the key component of lidar, optical beam-stearing, and developed a device that is significantly cheaper to manufacture, lighter and more resource-efficient than previous variations of the technology. Carlos Errando-Herranz, a postdoc at KTH's 's Division of Micro and ...

Radar technologies were originally designed to identify and track airborne military targets. Today they're more often used to detect motor vehicles, weather formations and geological terrain. Until now, scientists have believed that radar accuracy and resolution are related to the range of frequencies or radio bandwidth used by the devices. But a new Tel Aviv University study finds that an approach inspired by optical coherence tomography (OCT) requires little to no bandwidth to accurately create a high-resolution map of a radar's surrounding environment. "We've demonstrated a different type of ranging system that possesses superior range resolution and ...

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a light-based imaging technique currently used in clinical diagnostics to examine organs in vivo. The technique uses interferometry ; in which light reflected from an examined object combines with reference light that does not encounter the object to generate interference patterns that form 2-D and 3-D OCT images. It is possible to use longer wavelengths of light in the imaging technique for deeper penetration in light scattering materials. Such features offer possibilities for OCT in non-destructive testing (NDT) of samples, and improved non-invasive biomedical imaging. In a recent study, Niels M. Israelsen and co-workers at the ...

Researchers have developed a faster way to acquire 3-D endoscopic optical coherence tomography (OCT) images. With further development, the new approach could be useful for early detection and classification of a wide range of diseases. The new method uses computational approaches that create a full 3-D image from incomplete data. In the Optical Society journal Applied Optics , the researchers report that useful 3-D images could be constructed using 40 percent less data than traditional 3-D OCT approaches, which would decrease imaging time by 40 percent. OCT is a biomedical imaging technique that has seen expanding clinical use in recent years ...

A cheap, compact technique for analyzing samples at infrared wavelengths using visible-wavelength components could revolutionize medical and material testing. Infrared spectroscopy is used for material analysis, in forensics and in the identification of historical artifacts, for example,—but scanners are bulky and expensive. Visible- wavelength technology is cheap and accessible in items such as smartphone cameras and laser pointers. This led Leonid Krivitsky and colleagues at the A*STAR Data Storage Institute to develop a method in which a laser beam was converted into two linked lower energy beams: The link between the two beams allowed experiments using one beam ...

ith a thin probe and a burst of microwaves, doctors can eradicate cancer cells without opening up a patient for surgery. But when you're trying to cook a tiny amount of precancerous tissue to death in an area as delicate as, say, the esophagus—where muscles control the flow of food into the stomach—precision is paramount. A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineers is working to hone new imaging techniques that could allow for finer monitoring of this kind of minimally invasive ablation treatment. In an exploratory study recently published in the journal Biomedical Optics Express , College ...

A new technique for identifying and diagnosing damage to the human retina has been awarded 'Best Student Paper' at the industry-leading BIOIMAGING 2018 conference in Portugal. Doctoral candidate Bashir Dodo, from Brunel University London's Department of Computer Science, demonstrated a new algorithm for OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography) equipment which can automatically segment images of the retina into distinct layers. It's hoped the new technique, which can separate the retina into seven distinct layers, could improve the accuracy and speed of diagnosis , and help save the sight of patients by identifying damage earlier. Having taken inspiration from the psychological ...

Mark Wolff wanted to know. To him, the thought of suffering through Alzheimer's disease the way his father did—without knowing, and without his family knowing, what he was up against until late in its progression— is worse than learning, even while he's still perfectly healthy, that a possible precursor of the disease has gained a toehold Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-08-alzheimer-early-peeking-eyes.html#jCp

You may not have heard of optical coherence tomography, or OCT. But if you've visited an ophthalmologist recently, chances are your eye came within an inch or two of a scanning device employing the technology. Tens of thousands of these devices are in place in doctors' offices, where they're widely used to check for eye diseases. Now, Stanford University scientists have figured out how to retrofit these high-performance machines with off-the-shelf components, increasing OCT's resolution by several-fold and promising earlier detection of retinal and corneal damage, incipient tumors and more. The relatively simple, low-cost fix—entailing a ...

Corals are calcifying animals and are the prime architects of the most diverse marine ecosystem, the coral reefs. The coral animal harbors tiny microalgae as symbionts in its tissue, where they fix CO2 via photosynthesis and provide the animal host with organic carbon for its respiration. In turn, the microalgae obtain shelter and nutrients in the coral tissue, which extends over a complex calcium carbonate skeleton deposited by the animal host. The coral host takes several measures to optimize light harvesting of its symbionts, while avoiding excess light exposure. This includes tissue contraction and relaxation as well as synthesis of ...

In the 1971 film Diamonds are Forever, British secret agent James Bond uses fake fingerprints as part of a ploy to assume the identity of a diamond smuggler. At the time, sham prints were purely a futuristic bit of Bond gadgetry, but technology has since caught up. In 2002, the Japanese cryptographer Tsutomu Matsumoto showed that imitation fingerprints made cheaply from gelatin, a main component of gummy sweets, could trick up to 80 percent of standard fingerprint sensors. The sensors also sometimes fail to recognize legitimate prints when the finger being scanned is dirty, worn, scarred, or too wet or ...

Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have used a noninvasive light-based imaging technology to literally see inside the living brain, providing a new tool to study how diseases like dementia, Alzheimer's, and brain tumors change brain tissue over time. The work is reported by Woo June Choi and Ruikang Wang of the UW Department of Bioengineering, today in the Journal of Biomedical Optics . "The paper shows significantly enhanced imaging depth using a noninvasive laser-enabled technique for deep tissue imaging. In the brain, the imaging depth is almost doubled," said journal editorial board member Martin Leahy of the National ...

EU scientists have developed efficient new fibre optic lasers that deliver short wavelengths for accurate polymer material processing, at incredible strength and low cost. The consortium behind the new innovations, developed through the ISLA project, is now in the process of marketing some of these cutting edge devices.

A new approach that uses light to move mirrors could usher in a new generation of laser technology for a wide range of applications, including remote sensing, self-driving car navigation and 3D biomedical imaging. A team of University of California, Berkeley, engineers led by Connie Chang-Hasnain, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, used a novel concept to automate the way a light source changes its wavelength as it sweeps the surrounding landscape. They report their findings in the journal Scientific Reports , to be published Thursday, Sept. 3. The advance could have implications for imaging technology using LIDAR, or ...

A team at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Physics has created a laser capable of generating ultrashort pulses of light even under extremely difficult external conditions. This unique combination of precision and resilience is due to the fact that the whole process of generating femtosecond laser pulses takes place within a specially-selected optical fiber. Its appearance seems quite inconspicuous: just a flat, rectangular box, tens of centimeters across and about the same height, with a thin, shiny-tipped "thread" leading out of it, so long that it is rolled up into a coil. This small instrument, built by physicists from ...

Imagine shrinking tubes and beakers—in fact, most of a clinical chemistry lab—down to the size of a credit card. When engineers figured out how to do that two decades ago, they enabled complex tests to be performed with tiny "lab on a chip" technology. But until now, there has been no way to accurately measure the size of the tiny vessels they created. Now,scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have found a potential solution to this longstanding manufacturing issue. The NIST approach could meet an important need in the microfluidics industry, which creates devices ...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have demonstrated a laser-based imaging system that creates high-definition 3D maps of surfaces from as far away as 10.5 meters. The method may be useful in diverse fields, including precision machining and assembly, as well as in forensics.