PFI-RP: A high-performance, low-cost chip-scale platform for medical imaging

PFI-RP：用于医学成像的高性能、低成本芯片级平台

• 批准号: 2122581
• 负责人: Juejun Hu
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-08-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2122581&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: PFI; RP; performance; low; cost

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation – Research Partnership (PFI-RP) project is to democratize optical coherence tomography (OCT), an optical imaging technology that has enabled several medical diagnosis applications. Conventional OCT systems are assembled from bulk optical elements, making them bulky and costly, which severely hampers their adoption by the broader medical communities. The project aims to develop a transformative chip-scale platform. By leveraging standard silicon microfabrication technologies – like those used for computer chip manufacturing – the new chip-scale platform may provide more than an order of magnitude reduction in the OCT system cost while improving imaging quality and diagnostic accuracy. The high-performance, low-cost, miniaturized device will transform OCT from a high-end diagnostic technique to an easily and broadly accessible screening tool. The proposed OCT system, once realized, is anticipated to open fast-growing markets including point-of-care diagnosis, at-home disease monitoring, medical inspections in small clinics or community healthcare centers, affordable care for economically disadvantaged groups, and medical services in developing countries, among others.The proposed project seeks to pioneer a chip-scale OCT engine to overcome the large size and high cost of existing systems. The intellectual merits of the proposed solution are two-fold. First, unlike conventional OCT systems which involve a beam scanner, an interferometer, and a spectrometer, all assembled from bulky optics, the proposed OCT system will assume a transformative single-chip architecture integrating all three functional modules on a silicon chip. This approach eliminates complex assembly and alignment steps and leverages standard silicon foundry infrastructure to facilitate scalable, low-cost manufacturing. Second, while prior work has explored integrated photonics as a solution to miniaturize OCT, the on-chip components were down-scaled versions of their bulky counterparts. This project will pursue a cohort of architectural innovations to expand the OCT imaging depth and improve scanning speed and field-of-view while enhancing the axial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio, fully unleashing the potential of photonic integration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这种创新研究合作伙伴关系（PFI-RP）ENCE层析成像（OCT）的更广泛的影响/商业化，这是一种光学成像技术，已启用了严重的医学诊断应用程序。他们采用更广泛的医疗社区。 ，从高端诊断技术到简单且易于访问的筛选工具，带有转换形式的小型，微型设备预计将打开包括点，在家中的快速增长的市场疾病监测，小型诊所或社区保健中心的医疗检查以及发展中国家的医疗服务。与传统的OCT系统相比，支撑溶液是两个倍的，涉及梁扫描仪，而宽度仪均来自笨重的光学仪，lighters l buld otics l假设在硅芯片上使用变换性的单芯片炼金术。铸造基础架构可促进可扩展的低成本制造，而先前的工作已经探索了集成的光子学作为微型化OCT的解决方案，但芯片组件是较大的块状版本。粘贴深度并提高速度和视野的Esolution和信噪比，充分释放了光子整合的潜力。此奖项奖励NSF'SF'SF'SFFLY MISSION，并通过使用评估来降低了支持基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响评论标准。