Voxeleron Awarded NIH SBIR Grant for Device-independent Retinal Image Analysis Software Platform
Pleasanton, CA (PRWEB) February 08, 2017 -- Voxeleron announced today that it has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $222,991 from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Center for the Advancement of Translational Sciences (NCATS) to further develop device-independent retinal image analysis software.
This grant will significantly expand and enhance Voxeleron’s Orion image analysis software for studying optical coherence tomography (OCT) images of the human retina. This platform will provide the first device-independent and commercially available software that can perform analyses, static or longitudinal, on the thicknesses of the layers of the retina directly associated with photoreceptor and neuronal degeneration. Voxeleron will collaborate with Professor Pablo Villoslada of UCSF/IDIBAPS and Dr. Pearse Keane of Moorfields Eye Hospital to validate the algorithms and ensure clinical utility.
“Ocular and neurodegenerative diseases affect millions of Americans each year,” said Daniel Russakoff, Ph.D., Voxeleron’s co-founder and the principal investigator of this grant. “There is a dire need for advanced, device-independent tools for ophthalmic OCT analysis - a need we will address directly with this award.”
This technology is poised to facilitate the development of new and robust clinical biomarkers for the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases like age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy (DR), glaucoma, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis (MS), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). By validating segmentation algorithms across devices and time this work is poised to accelerate the pace of discovery and understanding for both ocular and neurodegenerative diseases.
Pearse Keane, MD, FRCOphth, is an NIHR clinician scientist at the Institute of Ophthalmology, UCL, and an honorary consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital.
Professor Pablo Villoslada is an adjunct professor at UCSF and the Director of the Visual Pathway Lab at IDIBAPS in Barcelona.
About Voxeleron
Voxeleron LLC is based in Pleasanton, CA, and was co-founded in 2010 by Daniel Russakoff and Jonathan Oakley to develop state-of-the-art software in the field of computer vision and machine learning. Voxeleron’s mission is to be the leader in delivering advanced image analysis solutions for applications in medicine, biology, and beyond. For more information, please contact Voxeleron at contact(at)voxeleron(dot)com.
Jonathan Oakley, Voxeleron LLC, +1 925 558 2755, [email protected]
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