I-Corps: Ultrahigh Speed Optical Coherence Tomography

光学相干层析成像(OCT)是一种新兴的无损成像技术，它能够对样品进行微米级、横截面和三维(3D)成像。OCT已被广泛应用于眼科、内窥镜、心脏病、泌尿科、皮肤科和牙科等临床应用，以及材料无损检测、工业检测和生产过程中的质量控制等工业应用。速度、分辨率和精确度定义了OCT市场的创新。创新的高性能OCT技术的开发和商业化将有助于极大地提高手术效率、诊断准确性和患者舒适度，并将在竞争激烈的近10亿美元的OCT设备市场体现出显著的竞争优势。I-Corps团队开发了空分多路OCT(SDM-OCT)技术，该技术利用并行成像方法，与最先进的商业OCT系统相比，速度提高了10倍以上。这项技术可以在下一代OCT设备(即新客户)中以低廉的成本实施，并有可能被改造成代表巨大现有客户基础的现有OCT设备。在这个i-Corps计划中，团队将进一步优化SDM-OCT技术，识别最终用户的客户需求，收集OCT制造商的反馈，并根据通过客户发现获得的见解制定知情的商业化战略。这些将使团队能够加快SDM-OCT技术从实验室到市场的转化，以便在临床和工业OCT应用的许多领域产生积极影响

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an emerging nondestructive imaging technology that enables micron scale, cross sectional, and three-dimensional (3D) imaging of specimens. OCT has been used in a wide range of clinical applications, including ophthalmology, endoscopy, cardiology, urology, dermatology, and dentistry, as well as industrial applications such as nondestructive testing of materials, industrial inspection, and quality control in the production process. Speed, resolution, and accuracy define innovation in the OCT market. Development and commercialization of innovative high-performance OCT technologies will help greatly improve procedure efficiency, diagnostic accuracy, and patient comfort, and will embody a significant competitive advantage in the highly competitive, nearly $1B OCT device market.This I-Corps team developed a space-division multiplexing OCT (SDM-OCT) technology, which utilizes a parallel imaging approach to achieve over a 10-fold speed improvement compared to state of the art commercial OCT systems. This technology can be inexpensively implemented in the next generation of OCT devices, i.e., new customers, as well as potentially be retrofitted into existing OCT devices that represents a huge existing customer base. In this I-Corps program, the team will further optimize the SDM-OCT technology, identify customer needs from end users, collect feedback from OCT manufactures, and develop an informed commercialization strategies based on insights obtained through customer discovery. These will enable the team to expedite the translation of the SDM-OCT technology from the laboratory to the market in order to make a positive impact in many fields of clinical and industrial OCT applications