New lab working to develop new OCT technologies for retinal therapies

The new Christian Doppler Ophthalmic Image Analysis (OPTIMA) laboratory at the Medical University of Vienna (MedUni Vienna) in Austria is developing new optical coherence tomography (OCT) technologies and computer programs to produce optimal diagnosis and, for the first time, completely individual treatment plans.

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The basic physics of OCT was developed at MedUni Vienna in the Centre for Medical Physics and Biomedical Technology, and then developed further and optimized in collaboration with the Eye Clinic for application in ophthalmology. With OCT, it is possible to identify disorders of the retina in high-resolution detail, and to do so at a very early stage and noninvasively. Using OCT, retinal disorders such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetes-related disorders, and vascular occlusions can be identified before any symptoms appear.

The OPTIMA laboratory opened officially on June 18, 2013, and it is the 11th Christian Doppler laboratory at MedUni Vienna. According to experts, the next OCT generation and analysis programs in development there could be operational in the clinic within two to three years.