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

诊断和治疗中耳疾病的耳鼻喉 (ENT) 专家和其他医疗保健专业人员需要了解患者是否感染，感染是细菌感染还是病毒感染，并确定感染严重程度的某种衡量标准。他们需要能够快速做出评估，因为他们对中耳健康的解释是重要介入治疗的基础，例如开抗生素处方或决定进行介入手术，以尽量减少疼痛、疾病、听力损失以及言语和语言发育迟缓。尽管这种疾病具有明显的重要性和普遍性，但诊断耳部感染的临床金标准本质上是放大镜。耳镜是医疗保健专业人员用来评估中耳健康的工具。问题是耳镜只能看到鼓膜表面，而疾病实际上发生在中耳。 该团队开发了一种手持式医疗设备，不仅可以观察鼓膜表面，还可以透过鼓膜看到中耳。由于抗生素和介入手术的更好管理，所提出的改进诊断将带来更好的临床结果。所提出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。这为医生提供了丰富的新信息，例如鼓膜厚度（已显示出随感染严重程度而变化）、渗出脓性（这是感染程度的有力指标），最重要的是，是否存在细菌生物膜（与通常对抗生素治疗耐药的慢性复发性耳部感染病例有关）。 借助 3D 信息，可以可视化并记录定量测量和指标，以进行客观诊断和治疗干预的纵向监测。该设备的使用方式与传统耳镜的使用方式相同，并且由于它可以提供客观的测量，因此技术人员或护士可以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.