OCT primary care imaging to advance with NIH grant to University of Illinois

Urbana, IL--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign bioengineering professor Stephen Boppart was awarded a $5 million dollar grant from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a bioengineering research partnership that will develop new handheld optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging technology for primary care providers. Boppart's team will partner with Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, the Eye Center in Champaign, Welch Allyn (a provider of medical office-based diagnostic instruments), Texas Instruments (Dallas, TX), AdvancedMEMS (Berkeley, CA), and Kyungpook National University in Korea.

The goal of the partnership is to create and test handheld OCT devices capable of delivering 3D images to primary care physicians of the ear, eye, skin, oral tissue, or cervix. The system will integrate OCT imaging with the otoscope and ophthalmoscope, which currently only magnify and light the surface of tissue.

"We are trying to build a small, handheld unit that has multiple tips," Boppart said. "What’s collected is 3D digital data that can image several millimeters into tissue and at micron-scale resolution." These images could replace biopsies in some cases, providing a noninvasive diagnostic tool.

Tests using the new technology will focus on two common patient problems: middle-ear infections and diabetic retinopathy. More specifically, the system will allow physicians to detect and quantify bacterial biofilms in the middle ear that are associated with chronic ear infections. The system will also allow for earlier detection of diabetic retinopathy and to quantify changes during treatment for that disease.

Boppart said the project will fund the research partnership for five years with potential renewal for an additional five years. The goal for the next five years of the partnership is to demonstrate the technology and create a standardized prototype. Then larger clinical trials can begin, he said.

SOURCE: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; http://engineering.illinois.edu/news/2011/07/05/federal-grant-advance-imaging-primary-care-physicians