Heidelberg Engineering licenses Mass General's OCT technology for ophthalmology

Heidelberg Engineering (Carlsbad, CA) has entered into a patent license agreement with Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH; Boston, MA), granting global and exclusive rights to 77 basic patents and patent applications relating to swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology for ophthalmology.

Spectral-domain OCT has become indispensable to eye care professionals worldwide to diagnose and follow-up patients with diseases of the posterior segment of the eye, such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy, or glaucoma. But swept-source OCT technology has specific characteristics that are ideal for acquiring comprehensive information about a wide variety of properties of the anterior part of the eye, especially of patients who have to undergo cataract or refractive surgery.

Along with the patent license agreement, MGH’s Wellman Center for Photomedicine and Heidelberg Engineering have established a long-term relationship on OCT research. The company is supporting the research, which is being led by one of the inventors of the swept-source OCT technology, Brett E. Bouma, Ph.D., Associate Physicist in the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School. The intent of both partners is to transfer future research results into clinically relevant concepts and products.

The company will introduce a new swept-source technology-based platform product to examine the anterior segment of the eye, says Dr. Tilman Otto, head of research and development at Heidelberg Engineering.

For more information, please visit www.heidelbergengineering.com.

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