Imaging & Detector Industry Report

Polaroid takes steps toward stabilityPolaroid Corp. (Cambridge, MA) has reached an agreement with its US bank lenders in an effort to maintain the company's near-term liquidity and operational stability. The company has retained Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Merrill Lynch & Co. to assist the company in an exploration of strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of assets, a merger or sale of the company, and/or a strategic partnership. In addition, Polaroid said it will not make certain upcoming interest payments on its bonds and intends to begin negotiations shortly with its bondholders regarding a potential restructuring of the company's debt, with the goal of developing a capital structure that will better support its long-term business objectives. The company intends to initiate discussions with its bondholders promptly to pursue a consensual restructuring of its unsecured debt. No changes in employee payroll and benefit payments are planned.Lucid and University of Rochester team up on medical imagerThe University of Rochester Medical Center and Lucid Inc. (both of Rochester, NY) have begun a collaboration aimed at helping Lucid move its laser microscope imager into the marketplace. Dermatology researchers will help Lucid develop guidelines and a pictorial atlas that will help physicians use the company's device—a laser confocal microscope that lets physicians peer below the surface layers of the skin to diagnose problems such as skin cancer without a surgical biopsy. University researchers have begun using the device to study various types of skin lesions; the researchers will provide Lucid with descriptions of telltale features that link an individual cell to a specific disease or condition, as well as digital images that have been diagnosed with a specific disease or condition. Lucid will use the images to produce a pictorial atlas that will serve as a reference tool for physicians using the company's system. The partnership will also help Lucid develop medical guidelines for using its imaging system.Telegen completes HGED manufacturing facilityTelegen Corp. (San Mateo, CA) has completed construction and outfitting of a 5200-sq.-ft. prototype manufacturing facility located in Foster City, CA, that is intended for the production of flat-panel, high-gain emissive displays (HGEDs). The company expects to finish production engineering activities in this facility and begin limited manufacturing of HGEDs by the end of the year, followed by construction of a larger manufacturing facility next year. The main focus of the facility is to implement Telegen's manufacturing technologies, which the company expects to fully deploy in a larger plant scheduled to begin operation in 2002, according to Stalimir Popovich, Telegen's senior vice president of display manufacturing. The newly completed facility is expected to produce limited sample quantities of 7- and 10.5-in.-diagonal displays by year's end and allow Telegen to move quickly to commercialize its HGED technology.Collaboration between E Ink and Philips produces resultsFour months after forming an agreement to develop and commercialize high-resolution, active-matrix, electronic-ink displays for use in smart handheld devices, Philips Components (Sunnyvale, CA) and E Ink Corp. (Cambridge, MA) exhibited their first display prototypes at the Society for Information Display Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition, held in San Jose, CA, earlier this year. The prototypes each consisted of a 5-in.-diagonal sheet of E Ink's electronic ink integrated with Philips' active-matrix backplanes and drivers. The modules displayed monochrome or gray-scale images—including text and illustrations—at a resolution of 80 pixels per inch.Also in the news . . .DRS Technologies Inc. (Parsippany, NJ) has been awarded new orders valued at $16 million to manufacture and provide engineering services for the US Navy's advanced display systems. . . . Eastman Kodak (Rochester, NY) plans to develop a full-field digital mammography system based upon direct amorphous selenium technology.

John Wallace