Silicon Valley imaging outfit forges academic partnership in Ireland

Compact Imaging (Mountain View, CA, USA) has formed a two-year research collaboration with academics at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUI; Galway, Ireland) and University of Limerick (Limerick, Ireland) to further develop the company's optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) was first commercialized more than a decade ago for use in ophthalmic and medical diagnostic imaging. But Compact Imaging claims that its multiple-reference optical coherence tomography (MRO) is very different in that it will enable the development of small cell phone size, OCT-based devices.

The collaborative agreement, led by and supported by Galway University Foundation and University of Limerick Foundation, will lead to the university foundations receiving equity in Compact Imaging. Additional financial details are confidential, for commercial reasons.

NUI Galway’s Professor Martin Leahy will direct the research efforts. Professor Leahy is chair of Applied Physics at NUI Galway, scientific director of the National Biophotonics Imaging Platform Ireland (NBIPI), and director of the University’s Tissue Optics and Microcirculation Imaging Laboratory (TOMI).

“By embarking on this collaboration with Professor Leahy and the laboratories at National University of Ireland Galway, Compact Imaging gains access to outstanding research capability with a group that has the right scientific expertise and research focus to move MRO well beyond where our startup-level resources would otherwise allow," says Don Bogue, CEO of Compact Imaging.

-- by Dave Wilson, Senior Editor, Vision Systems Design