Key Developments for Partial Coherence Biometry and Optical Coherence Tomography in the Human Eye Made in Vienna

Adolf Friedrich Fercher: a pioneer of biomedical optics

“…28 More details on these and other ocular biometry studies can be found in a recent review. 6 The improved precision and the contact-free application of PCI, which avoided anesthesia and any risk of infection, thereby being more convenient for the patient, finally convinced Carl Zeiss to market this technology as the "IOL Master." 29 In the following years, this technology largely replaced ultrasound instruments for ocular biometry, and, with 10,000 s of instruments installed worldwide, it is now the gold standard for this application and one of the most successful biomedical optics technologies so far.…”

“…The basic idea of using FD PCI for ocular biometry can already be found in an early paper from 1991 by Fercher et al 34 Although the paper deals with TD PCI, the following sentence can be found in the theory section: "Secondly, we can use a spectrometer to evaluate the spectral modulation given by equation (6). Here, D can be obtained from the distance δω of two dark bands in the channeled spectrum."…”

“…More information on additional aspects of the work of the Vienna group can be found in a recent review. 6 Fercher became interested in biomedical applications of optics at quite an early stage of his career. He published his first paper in this field when he was still working for Carl Zeiss.…”

Optical coherence tomography for precision brain imaging, neurosurgical guidance and minimally invasive theranostics

“…Therefore, OCT is widely used in intraoperative imaging, pre-operative diagnostic and postoperative evaluation (2,(5)(6)(7)(8)(9), especially, in ophthalmic lesion detection and diagnosis (10)(11)(12). OCT is treated as a minimally invasive, real-time diagnostic approach for minimally invasive integration of diagnostics and therapeutics.…”

Special Feature Development and Application of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)

“…OCT originated from low coherence interferometry [1] and was adapted for tomographic imaging in 1991 [2]. In OCT, broad bandwidth light is used in order to produce cross-sectional images of turbid and translucent samples with high axial resolution (in the order of a few µm).…”