Advances in optical imaging are helping drive the development of novel therapeutics, according to research published by market research firm Frost & Sullivan’s technical insights division.
A new report, entitled “Emerging Trends in Optical Imaging Techniques for Drug Discovery, Clinical Diagnosis and Molecular Imaging,” advises that optical imaging at both the macroscopic and microscopic levels is being used intensively by clinicians for diagnosis and treatment-specific applications.
Novel advances in optics, data acquisition methods, and image processing software have driven the development of optical imaging technologies that can be used to image tissues and other biological entities with enhanced contrast and resolution capabilities.
Technology trends are moving from conventional confocal microscopy to optical coherence tomography (OCT), according to the report. OCT in particular has gained much multidisciplinary research interest in recent years as a noninvasive optical imaging technique.
Because of the progress being made in OCT, many commercial devices will be developed and commercialized over the next four to five years, the report states.
Further refinement of OCT modalities could result in achieving significantly higher-resolution capabilities and better differentiation of cancerous lesions, embryology studies, and stem cells involving therapeutic research, according to senior research analyst Prasanna Vadhana Kannan.
