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Re-Engineered, Low-Cost Retinal Scanner Could Help Prevent Blindness

Since the 1990s, optical coherence tomography OCT imaging has become the standard of care for the diagnosis of many retinal diseases including macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and glaucoma. Duke University  biomedical engineers have now developed a low-cost, portable OCT scanner that is 15 times lighter and smaller than current commercial systems, and is made from parts costing less than a tenth the retail price of commercial systems. The primary technology enabling the smaller, less expensive OCT device is a new type of 3D-printed spectrometer designed by the researchers. In the first clinical trial, the new scanner produced images of 120 retinas that were 95 percent as sharp as those taken by current commercial systems, which was sufficient for accurate clinical diagnosis.

Topics:
Imaging Manufacturing & Prototyping Medical

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    Transcript

    00:00:04 now we're in the Duke lab and the department of biomedical engineering we have a lot of different projects going on here but I want to draw attention to our 3d printer you may ask how are we able to make our Oct so inexpensive and the answer is using rapid prototyping technologies usually a spectrometer which is the heart of the Oct system is a precision machined system requiring

    00:00:28 assembly of lots of parts with very high precision and tolerances on the other hand our patented proprietary design enables us to make a spectrometer out of a 3d printed part which has much lower tolerances the real advantage is that our system ends up being so much more robust it's immune to temperature changes mechanical shock and can be used in a variety of settings it's also much

    00:00:52 lighter which enables us to produce the four-pound system you can see here our new form factor it's significantly reduced it's about the third of the size and weighs about four pounds we still have the integrated PC in the top now instead of a full monitor we have a touchscreen this makes it more portable and easy to operate I'd like to show you the revised design for the handheld

    00:01:14 scanner this is similar to our previous scanner but contains most of the components here within the handle you can see that it's shaped in a form factor that makes it easy to use by hand for clinical studies we have it mounted to this slit-lamp base which makes it easier to position you can see this 3d printed part which was easily made to accommodate it in order to image a

    00:01:34 patient you have them clip their chin here on the chin rest and position they're all in front of the lens you you