CAMBRIDGE, MA — (Marketwire) — 03/13/13 — (BMC), a leading provider of (DM) products and , announced today that it has been awarded a $1.2M Phase II Competing Renewal Small Business Innovation Research Grant (SBIR) from the National Eye Institute (NEI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The grant will enable BMC to fabricate a next-generation Adaptive Optics Scanning Laser Ophthalmoscope (AOSLO), a high-resolution, high-contrast retinal imaging system which includes a MEMS deformable mirror for wavefront correction and was built in collaboration with the Indiana University School of Optometry. A primary goal of the project is to demonstrate the usefulness of AOSLO imaging as a quantitative tool in clinical studies of eye disease such as diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration. As part of this development, BMC will develop imaging, ergonomic, and software enhancements over the current AOSLO design. This project will also be a collaboration with Dr. Stephen Burns and Indiana University.
As part of the program BMC will install and support the AOSLO instrument at the Beetham Eye Institute (BEI) of the Joslin Diabetes Center for an observational pilot study. “One of our goals in the study is to examine AOSLO images taken from eyes of patients with and without diabetes and across a wide range of diabetic eye complication severity. This will allow us to characterize neural and vascular cellular changes in the diabetic retina and may give us new understanding of how diabetic eye complications develop and should be treated,” said Dr. Jennifer K. Sun, Ophthalmologist in Beetham Eye Institute at Joslin.
“We are pleased with the continued support we have received from the NEI,” said Paul Bierden, president of Boston Micromachines Corporation. “The AOSLO has proven to produce exceptional images of important retinal structures which should have a profound effect on the diagnosis and treatment of eye diseases.”
Founded in 1999, Boston Micromachines Corporation (BMC) is a leading provider of advanced microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) based mirror products and adaptive optics systems. By applying wavefront correction to produce high resolution images, BMC devices can be used for imaging biological tissue and the human retina and to enhance images blurred by the earth-s atmosphere. The company-s suite of award-winning compact deformable mirror (DM) products is the most cost-effective, highest performance mirrors in the market today. They are widely used to drive scientific discovery in , , , , and support a variety of applications. Customers include NASA, UC Berkeley, Oxford University, Lockheed Martin and Boston University. Located in Cambridge, MA, BMC is privately held and offers custom-designed manufacturing services in addition to its portfolio of standard DM products. For more information on BMC, please visit .
Laura MacSweeney
Red Javelin Communications
(781) 395-6420
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