PFI-RP: A high-performance, low-cost chip-scale platform for medical imaging

这项创新-研究伙伴关系（PFI-RP）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是使光学相干断层扫描（OCT）大众化，这是一种光学成像技术，已使几种医学诊断应用成为可能。传统的OCT系统由大块光学元件组装而成，体积庞大且成本高昂，严重阻碍了其被更广泛的医学界采用。该项目旨在开发一个变革性的芯片级平台。通过利用标准的硅微加工技术（如用于计算机芯片制造的技术），新的芯片级平台可以在提高成像质量和诊断准确性的同时，将OCT系统成本降低一个数量级以上。这种高性能、低成本、小型化的设备将把OCT从一种高端诊断技术转变为一种方便、广泛使用的筛查工具。拟议中的OCT系统一旦实现，预计将打开快速增长的市场，包括即时诊断、家庭疾病监测、小型诊所或社区医疗中心的医疗检查、经济弱势群体的负担得起的医疗服务，以及发展中国家的医疗服务等。该项目旨在开发芯片级OCT引擎，以克服现有系统的大尺寸和高成本。提出的解决方案在智力上有两方面的优点。首先，与传统的OCT系统不同，传统的OCT系统包括光束扫描仪、干涉仪和光谱仪，所有这些都是由笨重的光学元件组装而成的，拟议的OCT系统将采用一种变革性的单芯片架构，将所有三个功能模块集成在一块硅芯片上。这种方法消除了复杂的组装和校准步骤，并利用标准的硅代工基础设施来促进可扩展的低成本制造。其次，虽然先前的工作已经探索了集成光子学作为小型化OCT的解决方案，但片上组件是其笨重对应物的缩小版本。本项目将通过一系列的建筑创新来扩大OCT成像深度，提高扫描速度和视野，同时提高轴向分辨率和信噪比，充分释放光子集成的潜力。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation – Research Partnership (PFI-RP) project is to democratize optical coherence tomography (OCT), an optical imaging technology that has enabled several medical diagnosis applications. Conventional OCT systems are assembled from bulk optical elements, making them bulky and costly, which severely hampers their adoption by the broader medical communities. The project aims to develop a transformative chip-scale platform. By leveraging standard silicon microfabrication technologies – like those used for computer chip manufacturing – the new chip-scale platform may provide more than an order of magnitude reduction in the OCT system cost while improving imaging quality and diagnostic accuracy. The high-performance, low-cost, miniaturized device will transform OCT from a high-end diagnostic technique to an easily and broadly accessible screening tool. The proposed OCT system, once realized, is anticipated to open fast-growing markets including point-of-care diagnosis, at-home disease monitoring, medical inspections in small clinics or community healthcare centers, affordable care for economically disadvantaged groups, and medical services in developing countries, among others.The proposed project seeks to pioneer a chip-scale OCT engine to overcome the large size and high cost of existing systems. The intellectual merits of the proposed solution are two-fold. First, unlike conventional OCT systems which involve a beam scanner, an interferometer, and a spectrometer, all assembled from bulky optics, the proposed OCT system will assume a transformative single-chip architecture integrating all three functional modules on a silicon chip. This approach eliminates complex assembly and alignment steps and leverages standard silicon foundry infrastructure to facilitate scalable, low-cost manufacturing. Second, while prior work has explored integrated photonics as a solution to miniaturize OCT, the on-chip components were down-scaled versions of their bulky counterparts. This project will pursue a cohort of architectural innovations to expand the OCT imaging depth and improve scanning speed and field-of-view while enhancing the axial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio, fully unleashing the potential of photonic integration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.