I-Corps: Optimized OCT-Video Imaging in a Handheld Scanning Otoscope

诊断和治疗中耳疾病的耳鼻喉(ENTS)专家和其他医疗保健专业人员需要知道患者是否有感染，感染是细菌还是病毒，并确定感染的严重程度。他们需要能够迅速做出这一评估，因为他们对中耳健康状况的解释是进行重大介入治疗的基础，例如开抗生素或决定进行介入手术，以最大限度地减少疼痛、疾病、听力损失以及言语和语言发育的延迟。尽管这种疾病的重要性和流行率很明显，但诊断耳部感染的临床黄金标准基本上是一个放大镜。耳镜是医疗保健专业人员用来评估中耳健康的工具。问题是，当疾病实际发生在中耳时，耳镜只允许对鼓膜表面进行可视化。这个团队开发了一种手持医疗设备，不仅可以看到鼓膜表面，还可以透过鼓膜看到中耳。由于更好地管理抗生素和介入手术，拟议中的诊断改进将带来更好的临床结果。拟议的技术使用无害的近红外光来产生鼓膜和中耳内容物的三维图像。这为医生提供了大量的新信息，如鼓膜厚度(已显示随着感染严重程度的变化而变化)、渗出性脓肿(这是感染程度的有力指标)，以及最重要的是细菌生物膜的存在或不存在，这与通常对抗生素治疗耐药的慢性耳部感染复发病例有关。有了3-D信息，可以可视化和记录定量测量和度量，以进行客观诊断和治疗干预的纵向监控。该设备的使用方式与传统耳镜的使用方式相同，由于它可以提供客观的测量，因此它允许技术人员或护士获得与经验丰富的医生相同质量的诊断信息。

Ear Nose Throat (ENTs) specialists and other healthcare professionals that diagnose and treat middle ear disease need to know if the patient has an infection, whether that infection is bacterial or viral, and determine some measure of the severity of the infection. They need to be able to make this assessment quickly because their interpretation of the middle ear health is the basis for significant interventional treatment, such as the prescription of antibiotics or decision to perform interventional surgery to minimize pain, illness, hearing loss, and delays in speech and language development. Despite the obvious importance and prevalence of this disease, the clinical gold standard for diagnosing ear infections is essentially a magnifying glass. The otoscope is a tool healthcare professionals use to evaluate middle ear health. The problem is that the otoscope only allows visualization of the surface of the eardrum, when the disease actually takes place in the middle ear. This team has developed a handheld medical device that can not only view the surface of the eardrum, but can also see through the eardrum and into the middle ear. The proposed improved diagnostics will lead to better clinical outcomes due to better management of antibiotics and interventional surgery.The proposed technology uses harmless near-infrared light to produce three-dimensional images of the eardrum and middle ear contents. This provides physicians access to a wealth of new information, such as eardrum thickness, which has shown to vary with infection severity, effusion purulence, which is a strong indicator of the degree of infection, and most importantly, the presence or absence of a bacterial biofilm, which has been linked to chronic recurrent cases of ear infection that are generally resistant to antibiotic therapy. With 3-D information, quantitative measures and metrics can be visualized and recorded for objective diagnoses and longitudinal monitoring of therapeutic interventions. The device is used in the same way that a traditional otoscope is used, and since it can provide objective measurements, it allows a technician or nurse to obtain the same quality of diagnostic information as that of an experienced physician.