KIANEWS The future of healthcare
24. 11. 2020 Tuesday / By: Robert Denes / Generic / Exact time: BST / Print this page
Nokia is exploring how optical communication technologies could be used to revolutionize medicine. Read on for an article in which Nokia Bell Labs is currently researching how optical sensor and body space network technologies could continuously monitor the physiological condition of their wearers. These sensor expansions provide people with perfect knowledge of their health - and the doctors who treat them - as well as a tool for early detection of diseases, possibly before future epidemics begin, before they begin.
Achieving these types of long-term research goals often also results in inventions that can accelerate, differentiate, and disrupt health care. Here, we discuss two such technologies in the field of optical tomography: integrated OCT and holographic endoscopy. Together with Nokia Tech Ventures, Bell Labs is currently looking for external trading partners to bring them to the healthcare market.
Tomography is the taking of sections or slices of spatial 3D space using a penetrating wave. Examples of tomograms are magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using radiofrequency waves, X-ray computed tomography (CT) and sonication of ultrasound waves. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an interferometric imaging technique that uses low-coherence light to capture tomographic images by exploiting the optical scattering of biological tissues. The TOT wavelengths used in medicine overlap with the wavelengths used in optical communication.
Of all the OCT technologies used in medicine today, the device category called Surge Source OCT provides the best axial scanning depth and fastest scanning speed, resulting directly in a large field of view and high image quality. Therefore, it is often the preferred or indeed the only acceptable method for medical OCT imaging. However, OCT devices from a swept source are also the heaviest and most expensive, requiring a cart to keep the machine around, and costing between $ 50,000 and $ 150,000.However, our integrated TOT technology takes over the bulky and expensive TOT components of a TOT device from an overwhelming source and integrates them into a single miniaturized engine. This miniaturized OCT engine can have a major impact on currently available OCT devices.
Bell Labs has been able to integrate most of the optical components of an OCT device from a swept source into a single engine, which is only 1% of the volume of today’s OCT devices. orders of magnitude less than current state-of-the-art systems, while also reducing the need for repetitive calibration and maintenance. It also allows the creation of new categories of portable OCT devices for primary care, home care, remote control...read more Via Link